TGIF - POTW 1/12/07

Friday, at last. I'm wrapping up my assignments for the week and prepping for tomorrow's seminar.

I have been so busy that I almost forgot to post this week's reader photo, which is a real stopper. I placed it in the POTW holding-bin bookmark folder the moment I saw it.

It's by Wylie Maercklein, who is making his second appearance on the Picture of The Week page, and it has got quite a few creative elements going for it.

First, there's her gaze. You can crank all of the cool light in the world, and it is not gonna do anything for you if there is no connection to the subject.

Second, Wylie (I keep wanting to say "Wylie Coyote") has the subject in a bathtub, with her head partially submerged. That accounts for the neat floaty-air action.

Third, he makes use of the close, reflective nature of the bathroom walls as a light box, giving plenty of fill to his two (speedlight) flashes. Glamour-light-wise, it would have been hard to go wrong here.

(Wylie's doing some strong stuff, BTW, as seen in this Flickr Set.)

I would note with eyebrows raised that the flash -- including its deadly, charged capacitor -- is not only on a light stand in the tub but the stand is being held by the model's wet feet.

("Darwin, white courtesy phone, please...")

But as far as we know, this shoot went off with zero fatalities. So that's good.

By the way, this isn't the first time someone has used the lightbox-like qualities of a bathroom on this site.

Back to tomorrow's seminar, I got a chance to pop in at the place we'll be meeting. It's a nice, big white room with pretty consistent fluorescent lighting and plenty of blank wall space. Should work fine.

(I'll bring some green gels for you guys, so the ambient light color should not be a problem.)

Note: Folks, I'm exagerrating on the lethality of the submerged flash. Plenty of volts across the capacitor of a small, battery-powered unit. But not enough sustained amps to getcha.

Thanks for all of the engineers' responses nonetheless. Even had one guy actually offer to sit in the tub while someone tossed a flash (someone else's) in the water.

No, thanks.

-DH