Well Halloween’s coming up and my costume’s ready, so why not take a photo or two?
…I couldn’t think of an excuse either, so I took a photo or two.
“Who or what am I,” you ask? The RED Engineer from Team Fortress 2, that’s who! And if that answer means nothing to you, This video will provide some answers. “That’s all well and good”, you continue, “but what’s with the cap? Why aren’t you wearing a hard hat?” Well kind interneter, I went with the hard hat at first and didn’t like the way it looked. So I came up with another idea. Mann Co. is the weapons supplier to the RED and BLU teams. The hat is also an item you can obtain for your characters by using the in-game store. (I obtained this one by using the real world store.)
I also thought it might be fun to post about the process of making this photo. So here we go.
First, I collected all the necessary props and set up the shot.
Next I set up my main light behind to get the background a solid black and make everything stick out.
Then I add a reflector to bring out the detail in the shadows.
That’s slightly better, so I hop into the shot to see how it will look with me.
Clearly the reflector’s not enough. I’m way too dark and don’t stand out from the background the way I’d like. I add a fill light and put the reflector opposite that to put some more detail on the items in front of me.
Much better! Now it’s time to adjust the framing a bit and get the final pose down.
Just about ready, but there’s still a problem- The hat. If I had stuck with the hard hat it wouldn’t be as big of an issue. But because of its detail and departure from the standard headgear, that’s important information lost in shadow. So I added a third light with a snoot to light just the hat.
Awesome. Pulling back so you can see, the final set up looks like this:
Adjust the snoot slightly so it’s not so much of an eye light, get into wardrobe and it’s time to shoot for real. And we get our final result!
Happy Halloween everyone!
* “All of us” = Me.
