What Chuck Does

Can you handle this?

What goes through my head during a Charles Yeh shoot? Let me take you through the bullet points:

• What’s the main focus of the shoot? Seriousness/humor for this one.
• What’s effect am I going for? Edgy. Hard lighting on the face (snooted SB-800 flash). But we need to make the subject stand out from the background (rim lighting from the subject’s back) 
• What about the background? Black it out. The subject is the primary focus. Let minimal light spill into the background. Only enough to identify the setting.
• What are the details of the subject? 

1. It has to be believable. 
2. The shorts? Hike them up as far as possible. 
3. The headband, necessary for the added effect. By the way, the headband is actually the “belt” of a white robe. It’s about 45” long and needed to be kept out of sight behind my head. The racquet, absolutely necessary. 
4. The colors need to be bright and vibrant. The shoes added color, the shirt stood out like a sore thumb. And the red shorts? Priceless. 
5. The posture of the subject needs to convey realism. Think nerd. Think geek. The hunched shoulders, the shoulder width stance, the facial expression “Can you handle this?”

So, I flew in a model that I know will work for peanuts. He’s easy to work with and doesn’t mind long shoots with hundreds of exposures. Here is the final result:

Click through the image to see the larger version.

• The challenges? 

1. Being outdoors, the flashes did not always fire. Even though the rim light was only about 7 feet away from the transmitter (SU-800), it wasn’t firing half of the time.
2. The mosquitoes were eating me alive. Especially the insides of my thighs.
3. Hiding the remote in my right hand behind where I gripped the racquet. Often the strap of the remote would slip out into the scene.
4. Making sure my junk stayed in my shorts. Also make the shorts shorter, I rolled the end of the shorts inside out but they would occasionally fall down.

Strobist info: Snooted SB-800 camera upper left firing 45 degrees onto face, umbrella camera right for fill, umbrella camera left behind subject for rim lighting.

What do you think? Feel free to leave comments!