Today’s Post by Joe Farace
One of the best ways to make yourself happy in the present is to recall happy times from the past. Photos are a great memory-prompt…—Gretchen Rubin
Over the years I’ve posted many different photographs of different models demonstrating photography, lighting and even software techniques .
On the next #ThrowbackThursday or so, I’ve decided to feature a small group of models who share few interesting similarities, with their most notable trait being that I was either the first or one of the first persons to photograph them, never photographed them again and she later went on to fame and fortune (or some version of it.) It’s not that I didn’t want to photograph them again, I did. It’s just that, for may reasons, the opportunity never occurred.
Whenever certain models are featured on this blog I get nostalgic about the memorable shoots we had together and for many reasons. And, get this, whenever I post any of these women’s images the Internet seems to love them. And I can see why. I think it’s because not only are they attractive but there’s an inner light shines through in their portraits that, well, shows their true personality.
Would I like to photograph them again? Of course! The fallout caused by the pandemic in the on-line modeling community that I have written about before completely shut down my studio work and I don’t know how to kick start it. Money won’t work because I don’t have any. But if the opportunity presents itself, my studio lighting gear is just waiting to get fired up…
Recently on of the best models I ever photographed (and haven’t photographed since November, 2018) have been in contact. She interested in having me photograph her again but—wait for it—she has COVID-19. In the interest of stimulating her interest in being photographed by me, again, I’ve posted this image from our last shoot together.
How I Made this Portrait
Today’s featured image of Erin Valakari was made during our last shoot together in November, 2018. The lighting setup used a Paul C. Buff DigiBee DB800 with a Plume Ltd hexagonal Wafer soft box that was placed at camera right. An Alien Bee B800 with an 18-inch Paul C Buff OMNI reflector with triple layer diffuser sock is at camera left while another Digibee with a 48-inch Dynalite Quad Square black/silver umbrella that was placed in a back left corner of my studio. The background was a cheap muslin background suspended from a JTL background stands.
The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with a used Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (at 31mm) that I purchased on eBay from a camera store in Japan. The exposure was 1/125 sec at f/11 and ISO 200. Image was color balanced with PictoColor’s iCorrect Portrait plug-in, retouched using my standard retouching techniques and then tweaked using the Glamour Glow filter that’s part of Color Efex.
In 2022, I’m Searching for a New Muse…If you have a friend (or maybe yourself) who would like to be my new muse, please contact me through the Contact page or send me an e-mail at joefarace at gmail dot com. We can schedule a test shoot or interview whichever is more convenient.