Alley Cat
An oldie but a goodie. I was experimenting this morning with the grunge look that’s so popular with sports and concert photos nowadays. I thought this frame was a natural to try something a little different. In Camera Raw, I cranked the contrast, shadows, and clarity to 100, then started tweaking from there. Moved the Blacks slider left to keep the shadows from washing out (looked too “HDR” to me at first). I also dragged the Vibrance slider to the left to get that desaturated look.
For the shoot itself, I lit the scene with an SB-800 (Nikon CLS), about 1/2 power, camera right, with Stoffen diffuser, 1/4 CTO. Fill with gold reflector, camera left. Also used a slaved SB-26 lower camera left, 1/8 power, with grid spot, to light the face of the guitar.
Shot in the shade, in a seedy back alley in Perry, Iowa. It was actually quite bright, but the strobes overpowered the ambient, which was the intent.
This shot was used in the “Rock Band” books that I produced a couple years ago, and my brother Scott wrote (that’s him in the picture, with the wicked Rickenbacker). Scott used to be frontman for a couple of indie KC bands (even opened for Cheap Trick at a stadium gig once!) He still plays and composes.
