Behind the Photo-Studio Photography
I mentioned yesterday that The Oklahoman Photography staff did well at this year’s Great Plains Journalism Awards. A contest that includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, North Dakota and Iowa. One of the categories that we don’t have in our local AP/ONE and SPJ contests is Studio Photography. Basically, the best picture taken in a Studio. This year, Our Director of Photography, Doug Hoke, was the Winner in this category. Here’s what he wrote about the winning photograph.
The sports department chose the theme of “Dark Horses” for it’s high school football playoff section. A different way of approaching the playoffs. When the writer contacted me about the assignment, he described the idea and said he had a model, one of the local stars, and the eye-black patches. I wanted to keep the photo simple and one that worked either in color or black and white, since we didn’t know where the photo was to appear in the section. I decided to use an 85mm lens wide open at f 1.8 to limit the depth-of-field to draw the focus to the words “dark horse.” So, although I shot in the studio where we have over 4,000 watts of strobe power available, I just used the 250 watt modeling light in one head with a 8” reflector and a grid above the camera, to concentrate the light on the player’s face. I kept the player well away from the background so that it would drop to black. I then moved in as tight as the lens would focus, keeping the framing horizontal to add power to the face and let the sides drop to black.
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