Making People Happy with Natural Light.

I was hired by Compendium Inc. to photograph their new series of greeting cards and the displays they are going to be sold from.  That posed an interesting challenge. I love shooting still life, but their style is a bit different from the one I usually go for.  They wanted  bright images, with a strong 'natural light' feel to them. This is sometimes easier to be said than done here in the NW, where natural light is often rapidly changing during the day. My solution was to shoot with mixed light, putting the displays (and the model in another similar shoot) next to a large window and letting the natural light to work as a global fill, about 1.5 stops below key. Then I  put a large softbox 6ft high on camera right to be the main light source, well aligned with the windows. Then a strip light behind the display on camera right and two smaller ones pointing and the white background.  To give the image a bit more of a 3D 'punch' (but while under the watchful look of the AD,  to stay consistent with the Compendium look ) I used as  a cheap ring flash adapter  as fill.  The flash  was mounted on an on-camera Canon Speedlite.  So umm,  five lights total. Note:  this set up requires your other strobes to have optical slaves.


Have  you noticed that the format of the blog posts has changed?

Everything but the Girl

This is my favorite image from a shoot with my friend Kristin, whose latest artistic project involves singing and writing songs for her band Imaginary Daughter. While sometimes I enjoy doing complex outdoor shoots, this was a simple studio portrait taken with just a large softbox at camera left, up and close to the subject. Why add distractions when the subject can hold the scene all by herself? Nothing else was really needed and even the post processing was kept to a minimum. MUA and assisting by the fast, talented and witty Shannon Colleen. You can find her at VAIN.

Just Shirts. But.

This is my favorite still image from a shoot I did for a fashion company that designs, you probably guessed it, shirts. The most fun part of the shoot was deciding how the shirts should look like, or, better, what should the viewer feel. And who is going to be the viewer? The target customer of the company a +40, married, reasonably wealthy, married guy? One never really sells a shirt. And a shirt is a shirt is a shirt...so we thought that the buyer (most likely his wife or so the marketing research offered) would rather imagine her partner doing cool things rather than being at the office. The look and palette came together shortly after that: a bit of americana, warm colors, old wood, a truck parked somewhere. Yes the shirts have to 'feel' more than just 'look' nice. This is the final result, or..the final result I liked the most, but not the one that made it to the final campaign. Oh well! But how did I get the shot? $20 worth of wood panels painted to make the wood darker, a softbox with extra diffusion from an opaque plexi panel low and inclined behind the shirts (the bottom of the box was flagged) ringflash on camera and two super thin strip lights on the sides. Shot from above. The most important thing? The styling of the shirts done by the always impeccably perfect Kimberly Swedelius. Oh yes, remember to copyright your images once you are done with the shoot. Just saying.

Shoot what you like with a touch of ring flash.

The client that will give you the most creative freedom..is yourself. I often shoot
things that I have got for myself (even if sometimes it means waiting before I wear/use them).
Well, they obviously inspired me, so. You will be pleasantly surprised how a client will then like
what you have shot and ask you for a similar look.

This time I picked these shoes from Above and Below, a small company in London that make unique sneakers. They are made of reused fabric from the London Tube and recycled leather. Pretty neat uh? Their website even has a soundtrack that is rather spot on.

So the shot: the scheme was fairly standard: gridded spot behind/above, side speedlite behind the shoes and on camera left (made sure that it did hit the logo), ring +softbox as fill. The color scheme was a play on the dominant colors: green and blue. I added layers of magenta (shadows) and yellow (highlights) to highlight them. As a final touch I dialed down the contrast on the highlights to give the image a bit of a 'film' look.

Now excuse me while I go on a walk...

At the Mima Mounds, where we lay our scene.

Photographers like to complain that a fun photo gig is hard to find and that and a client fun to work with is rare. But, this last June I got proof that fun shoots and clients do exist and sometimes come together! Two clients actually, who needed a portait, were not afraid to experiment, came with good ideas and a budget to do things right. Awesomeness. I had met with them a couple of weeks before. The theme of the portrait was 'Life is a Journey'. So I suggested to shoot at a location that had a feeling of remoteness to it (but was just a couple of hours drive from a large city) and to bring objects that where meaningful to them to the shoot. You can see my clients looking cool in this image, a shot of the set taken with the final lights set up. It shows the position of the assistant, whom I had to take out in post for the final shoot. He has to stay close to the subjects to make sure the light on them is soft.

The location is the Mima mounds, a little park South of Olympia, WA. It is a vast natural area with an almost geometric pattern (the mounds!) surrounded by tall trees. They frame the scene nicely, and I am a sucker for tall prairy grass. Moreover a path goes through the grass and allows easy movement of props and equipment. The team included me and two assistants. I decided to shoot with the 7' PL umbrella as fill next to camera and the softlighter as key to camera right. I wanted enough power to underexpose the sky 1.5 stops, so for a scene this big speedlights would not cut it. I love them because they are so portable, but sometimes one has to use the big guns! I used two Einstein heads, which did the job without flinching. The large softbox is well, very large and does not like the wind. So we rigged it to the ground with some ropes and tent stakes. As we had everything pretty much planned the whole shoot took just a couple hours. I used a different palette for the final image, but this one is a bit more eery and it works well for my portfolio. The lighting striking from the Softlighter is not coming from the Einstein head, it's a break in the clouds from which the Sun shone through for a few seconds. Sometimes a photographer gotta be fast.

Backstage Video! Courtesy of BossnotBoss

BossotBoss is a cool blog designed and built by Christopher Martin, Hamilton Boyce and the (oh so) dangerous Selena Goodwin.

BnB followed me on the 'Children's Songs' shoot and interviewed me on a desert island!
It was great fun (especially going around on the paddling boats). Here is the video that they recently posted.

Fabio Governato Interview from BossnotBoss on Vimeo.

Soft light on Jade for Veridis Clothier

I have been shooting for a male fashion client and for one of the shoots we hired a female model (who do you think is going to buy those shirts for him anyway? Right?). Enters Jade, who was super great to work with. My stylist Tiffany and I borrowed clothes from a local store, the excellent 'Veridis Clothier', an independent fashion store in Seattle. The location of this image is a great garage in Capitol Hill. Wood floors, large windows, completely empty but a free giant prop in the form of a vintage Ford truck? Perfect. Shot with a Canon speedlite mounted on a Softlighter at camera right. The image is a superposition of a colored layer and one closer to the original to preserve skin and clothes colors.