Singer-songwriter (and sometime model) Tommi Ojala photographed in the studio. Lighting is a speedlight in a gridded Westcott Apollo medium softbox to camera right.
You may recognize Tommi Ojala from the Chilluminati launch shoot I did a few months back. Tommi gives “great face”, as they said in the ‘90’s, but he’s also a talented singer-songwriter. I asked him to sit for me in the studio and a few weeks ago we made time for a shoot.
Coming in, he had no idea what I was planning because I didn’t, either. I wanted to make some quiet portraits of him utilizing a painted backdrop (made by the incredible Heidi Kesti) and see where we would go from there. I really didn’t know Tommi at all, because we met on the Chilluminati shoot and that’s always hectic. So, as far as his energy, what he would gravitate to—all these things I was going to find out during our time in the studio.
As I was setting up, I took a look at the painted backdrop. It’s a cool gray and very nice for a lot of things, but this time I decided to use the reverse side. This is where all the paint had seeped through when Heidi was making it. It’s got these great random patterns and a really interesting texture. The picture at the top is shot with Tommi in front of the reverse side of the backdrop.
Speedlight in gridded Westcott softbox. This is the ‘official’ side of the canvas, a cool gray that’s useful for many things.
I really dug the flipside and will use it again on occasion. We kept Tommi’s wardrobe simple: black and white. He has cool tattoos and those would bring in a splash of color but mostly we worked the painted canvas as pretty simple in terms of color.
We kept it laid-back and simple. Lighting is still the same gridded box, this time camera left. I plopped him on a chair and we started with this look, before getting into another shirt and hat and so on.
More drama just by looking for a new pose and a tilt of the head to bring in more shadows. Lighting stays the same. Great when subjects bring their own splash of red, which a picture should always have.
We wanted another look by changing Tommi’s get-up slightly. He brought a couple of hats but we also shot a bunch of stuff without one, which is equally nice. Tommi wanted to work his hands and fingers to a portrait, maybe obscuring the face a little, and that can result in a very interesting picture.
The hands always require some experimenting so as to get the gesture right. I shot this on an 85mm f/1.8 lens set at f/4. With that focal length that’s usually as far as I open up the f-stop. That shallow depth of field usually works for me well enough without having to go to f/2.8 or further.
I shot this as a pair with alternate focus. For artistic reasons, see!
Now, when I said I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do with Tommi when he got in the studio, I exaggerated a little. I did want to try out some stuff with colored gels with him and told him as much, telling him that this is going to be just me trying out stuff and seeing what sticks. Trial and error, and he was well up for it.
I have a purple gel on a Profoto B600 head in a gridded beauty dish. I was going to add 1-2 more colors to the image and as I was setting up my purple key light, I made this image, which I thought made for an interesting portrait. Background is now white seamless paper.
Same purple key as in the previous image but complemented with a 1/2 CTB gel on a gridded speedlight camera left. I shot some stuff with a third light that was gelled yellow but I wasn’t really happy with that combination. So I stripped it down to two lights/colors. Notice how a Canon 430 EX II speedlight can keep up just fine in a supporting role with the Profoto B600. The little guys pack a surprising punch! Note that the final colors have been tweaked in LR/Photoshop a touch.
And there you have it! We shared some stories and swapped favorite artists over coffee in between sets. If you want to check out Tommi’s stuff (and you should), you can do so at MANONTHEMOON in Spotify. Toodle-oo!