ProVid: Photographing the Cowboy in the Barn
Three videos for premium subscribers, demonstrate this classic portrait using a double light, single direction technique in an old barn.
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Photographing the Cowboy in the Barn
I was teaching a cowboy portrait photo workshop at a Rocky Mountain photography event and had begun the seminar when the models that the venue had hired showed up. This guy was among them and when I saw him I had an OMG moment.
His name was Tony and he was PERFECT for not only my workshop but as a model for some of my photo ideas. While I was ready to get started with my workshop, I first walked over to Tony and asked him to not leave before we talked and he agreed.
I went ahead with the workshop, which was basic studio portraiture where I demonstrated lighting techniques using a canvas background, and Tony was my model. I demonstrated lighting people and lighting backgrounds and then all workshop participants were able to photograph Tony.
After we completed the workshop, I went over and chatted with Tony and asked him about modeling on location somewhere. He was totally into it and we planned to connect on a day right after the photography event ended.
I also asked him if he had suggestions for an old barn somewhere that we could use to photograph him and he did know of one, but it was more than an hour away. While my schedule was tight, I was not going to miss this opportunity, so we got up early that day and headed out.
Upon arrival at the ranch, Tony showed me the ‘barn’ and my instant reaction was “oh no!” It was a large shed in my opinion and full of ‘stuff.’ But, it reminded me of so many tough assignments I was on where I would arrive on site and panic, thinking what the heck am I gonna photograph?" In these cases, you have no choice when on assignment other than to deliver a gold-star image.
But, I did not worry for long because, as I looked around, I saw a total treasure trove of Western paraphernalia that would make an amazing background. All we had to do was move around the garbage cans and other stuff.
I got started setting up and testing and rearranging some stuff on the wall for the perfect background.
This was my first test shot with no work done to it and you can see that the lighting is quite bad.
The final image required complex lighting and lots of Photoshop work.
The next three videos from my ProVid library demonstrate in great detail, how I lit, photographed, and Photoshopped this image for the final result.
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ProVid tutorials include very in-depth tutorials, often videos, that come from one of my online streaming photography courses hosted here. These courses are paid for by those who enroll so I am unable to post them for free.
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