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UPDATE: In addition to abs, this one also has legs. It has made the rounds to Jezebel(!), Billboard and Blair’s blog, too. I am heading out to get some ab spray now.
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Do you live in Phoenix? Were your lights flickering for a while a few weeks back?

That could have been Blair Bunting’s cover shoot for Billboard Magazine. He used 7 Profoto packs, 14 light sources and just under 20 Kilowatt-seconds of power every time the shutter tripped. For a 3/4-length portrait.

Oh, and the subject was naked. So I am sticking it behind the “read more” jump.
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You⁽¹⁾ were expecting a female, perhaps?

Too bad. And Blair did not even have the luxury of the black circle over Bret Michaels’ junk during the shoot. I’ll let him explain.

A few weeks ago the good people over at Billboard called and asked if I would photograph Bret Michaels for their cover. I was busy at the time and more or less scanned over the email while on set with another shoot. Through my terrible reading skills I managed to miss one big word: NAKED.

In the past, I have shot subjects such as the “naked centerfold” for Cosmopolitan, but they were always conveniently covered. When I had my first pre-production meeting with Billboard I pitched the idea of Bret with a cowboy hat covering the goods while his hands gave his trademark “rock on” gestures. Their response was, “that sounds great, but let’s get rid of the cowboy hat.”

I must confess, I had worked 5 straight days before the shoot, and flew in from Chicago only hours before the call time. As tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. Not out of excitement, out of anguish that I would have to ask the former lead man from Poison to drop trou and smile. On top of that I was planning on using one very complex lighting setup that would hopefully render me blind enough to not know what was in front of my camera so long as I could pull a sharp image.

We had 14 light sources, 7 packs, and just under 20,000 watt seconds of Profoto happiness. [Editor’s note: Pretty sure Mr. Michaels’ kid-having days are over…] There was so much light that when I popped each frame, the RGB in our vision separated — seriously. However, I had dedicated that almost all of this shot would be out of camera as I didn’t want to stare at the Celebrity Apprentice that much on my monitor afterward.

By now you’re probably wondering how much of a prima donna Mr. Michaels was in this exposed situation. In all honesty, they don’t get any cooler and more relaxed as Bret on set. We drank, we laughed, we didn’t take ourselves seriously, and we got the shot.

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Well, you hadda know there’s gonna be a lighting diagram:

This one is a little busy, so follow the bouncing ball:

• The key light (green) is a large Elinchrom Octa as a modifier, 10 feet high.

• Under that are stacked two small Profoto softboxes (purple) at 4 and 6 feet high, (so the key becomes a giant strip light with extra oomph up top.)

• Fill is from a white Profoto beauty dish (orange) at bottom left, 3 feet high

• Uplight/rims are from Profoto strip boxes (blue) on the floor behind

• Hair lights (yellow) are from Profoto 30-degree grid spots, 12 feet high

• Background light is from four Profoto Magnum heads (red) 8 and 3 feet high on each side. (Which is more power just on the background than I think I have ever used on an entire shot.)

• Black V-flats control glare into the lens from all of the backlights. (Obviously, pretty critical given all of the lumens coming back at Blair’s shooting position.)

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Overkill?

That is a matter of opinion.

And not, I would wager, if you are trying to sculpt every line in Michaels’ body as Blair was clearly doing. It is an over-the-top look made by over-the-top (and bottom, and sides, and back) lighting.

So, how much of this is straight out of the camera, and how much of it is post production? Well, if you take a look at the work on Blair’s site you can see that he is pretty handy with that edgy, sculpted light. And since the SOOC version is obviously gonna be NSFW, I am not going to post it here.

But there just might be a little clandestine cell-phone BTS video…

If you want the no-post-processing version (and thus, the “Full Monte,”) you are going to have to make that click for yourself.

Strobist

Time was, things were simpler and fluorescent lights only required a 30CC magenta filter in front of your film-based camera lens to bring them into line. Green your flash and you were done. Then the hippies took over and now we have CFLs pretty much everywhere. And they are not all the same color, either.

Today, Joel Svendsen (who is not a professional actor but merely an ordinary person much like yourself) will walk you through how to correct for the various types of fluorescent lights.

It is geared towards video but you can translate pretty easily. The big difference is that video folks frequently work with tungsten lights. Or as they apparently call it, a package.

But thanks to Joel I shall henceforth think of warm CFLs, for instance, as sort of a weird combo of tungsten and fluorescent, both of which need to be fixed.

Joel, BTW, is the man at Rosco behind the Strobist Collection gel pack — which also saved the gel sample program from certain death. And that means that he drinks for free in Baltimore, whenever he visits.

-30-

Strobist

UPDATE:

Many thanks,
DH
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Tired of the hyper-polarized election season? How would you like to spend Tuesday, November 2nd doing something worthwhile — and nonpolitical — with your camera?

Don’t get me wrong — I am gonna vote. But I thought it would be cool to spend the rest of Election Day doing something real with my camera to benefit a very worthy local organization. It is gonna be in a beautiful outdoor setting, and I think it will be a lot of fun.

If you might be interested in helping, keep reading.
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I am organizing a group of photographers to spend a day (or part of a day) at an historic farm in Howard County, MD. It is a nonprofit organization that focuses on the preservation of farm history, and we will be shooting to provide photos for their use on the website, brochures, educational presentations, etc.

There are a couple other very cool layers involved. But that is not something I am ready to talk about publicly on the site yet, for reasons that will become obvious should you decide to join us. Suffice to say that it will be fun, creative and we’ll be helping a worthy cause.

Possibilities for shooting will span from sunrise (yeesh!) to after sunset. So for those of you who are self-employed and/or at least partially in control of your own time, there is some flexibility. But you should be willing to commit for a few hours or so.

And that is all I am gonna say. A little cryptic, to be sure. But as I said, there will be more info coming.

If you are interested in taking a little bit of a photographic flyer, please leave your name, city of residence, email and phone number in a comment on this post. Also, give me ONE SENTENCE about you as a photographer — your specialty, skill level, boxers or briefs — whatever.

It would also help if you could let me know your overall availability for the day. Logistically, I’d rather have someone for an afternoon than a lunch hour.

Important: No comments will be moderated into print, so your info will not be made public. If we have worked together before, please remind me.

I’ll choose a dozen or so of the most appropriate people, and be in touch with you either way (with more info, if appropriate) by the end of the day.

So, are you in?

Strobist