So I’m taking another workshop at Julia Dean Photography Workshops in Venice, one with Maura Lanahan on studio lighting. I took a one-day workshop with her a while back so knew enough to jump on the opportunity of a six-week course. It’s been a blast so far. Last class, we tried imitating the light on a portrait of Julianne Moore in Vanity Fair, which is heavily Photoshopped and has a very painterly quality to it. One of the guys in our class has an Elinchrom Octabank, which he brought. The light is magnificent.

We had a model there, Tristyn Heldt, who was just awesome. We built a little ghetto set out of a table, camera bags, and some coats. We had a candle, like the Vanity Fair portrait, so we needed the f-stop at 5.6 and the shutter speed at 1/30 or even lower so that the flame appeared. We put a background light on the black seamless, gridded it and gelled it in yellow (as if the candle was casting the glow) and I think it was one stop slower than the main.

And this is one of my pictures I really like. A bit desaturated, lots of burning and dodging, some skin softening and cloning, and judicious use of the liquify tool. But gorgeous.