"1-2-3 jump!" Guitar virtuoso Petteri Sariola nails the high jump.
So there I was last summer, hanging around at a local record store and checking out a mini-concert by the astonishingly talented--and wonderfully animated--guitar player Petteri Sariola. He was in town to promote his new album, Resolution, and as I was watching him rock out in the confined space of the store, I had a thought: This guy would make for a great portrait.
I'd known his music for a number of years and I'd spent a lot of time with his Phases album back in 2010 when I got it. He is a fingerstyle guitarist and essentially it means he makes the acoustic guitar sound pretty much like an entire band. If you haven't already, check out his stuff on Spotify, like this, and this, and this. He's pretty great.
And a nice guy, to boot! He immediately said yes as I approached him with the idea of making his portrait. Kinda risky for him, because he'd never met me before, but I like to think I projected an aura of professionalism which instantly rendered him unable to resist such an offer.
Well, maybe he's just a really nice guy.
He was in town until the next day which meant I had just enough time to find a spot, come pick him up at the hotel at noon and go make his portrait. Sariola is very energetic when playing live and that's what I wanted to capture, so I went looking for a place that would be great for some jumping. In the Hollihaka neighborhood of Oulu, I found this:
Okay, so grassy knoll, sky, foliage and all that...this could work. Shot this on the previous evening to the shoot.
We'd be there right after 12 o'clock which meant direct sunlight. A decent amount of flash power would be required so I brought in a 600 Ws Profoto Acute B pack and head in a beauty dish. I'd still have to be kind of up and close with it, but I'd be able to control the overall exposure armed with that. And if it was cloudy, even better, because I'd have my own light source and could get some dramatic skies.
The next day it transpired that we had a mixture of both: some thin clouds which drifted across the sun. We'd be in full sunlight and then clouds would mosey on in front of the sun, knocking down the exposure, but just a couple of stops. And then boom! Back to full sunlight.
Not to worry! I set up the beauty dish to key Sariola from the direction of the sun so there wouldn't be two apparent light sources. (The sun was very high up in the sky so I couldn't really use it for an interesting backlighting situation.) I thought I was being clever but ha, I didn't think it through. Because what would a light stand in between the sun and a subject do? Yes, cast a shadow on said subject!
At any rate, I was ready to begin and I wanted to get started with some calm portraits, all cool and collected, before the jumping and the sweating and the "One more jump" thirty more times.
Plan, working! He did his own make-up. I was out-professionalized.
The sky was a bit blah, but fortunately, there was something going on in there. The ambient exposure was such that I had to be at f/16 and 1/125s and ISO 100 so that I was able to get some saturation in the sky. I could have gone to f/22 and under-exposed the sky one more stop, but the AcuteB was working hard as it was. (The reason I chose to use the white dish was to get this quality of light, looking like the sun but softer and more pleasant.)
I had him play the guitar but easy-going stuff, as I didn't want him moving too much--yet. He started jamming and went through some cool riffs, Soundgarden's Spoonman being one that stuck to mind. Onward!
Plan, slightly biting me in the ass! When the sun came out, the shadow from my light stand hit the body of the guitar and his arm.
See, that's the fluffy cloud stuff that was there to annoy me. But it did make for a more interesting background than just blue. That's the working distance I had between the 22" dish and Sariola.
Getting low for a change.
Time for the jump stuff. But! How to freeze him in the air? The flash was useless, because in that bright ambient light I couldn't use it to stop his motion. Well, there was the sun, which has p l e n t y of light.
I wanted to get a really fast shutter speed so there would be absolutely no motion blur on him. I chose 1/2000s to be sure. But I would need a decent aperture, too, because I didn't want him to have a very narrow depth of field (he would be taking a running start and jumping) causing me to miss my focus. Something like f/5.6 would be good for around 50mm.
Now, without the flash, I was a stop or two underexposed at f/5.6, 1/2000s and ISO 100. ISO 400 would probably have been enough but I pushed it to 800 because noise wouldn't yet be an issue and I wanted to have some leeway, just in case I wanted to go to f/8 and 1/1000s or something. The settings are the same in the picture at the top of the post.
There we go! Pre-focus on him where he is going to jump straight up in the air, wait for the high point in the jump/gesture and with a fast shutter speed he'll be frozen against the skies. He has a pretty good bounce but I did crop out the ground...
Another variation. I like the gesture with the guitar and the shape of the body, but his face is obscured somewhat. The clouds were moving something fast.
Voilá! Thanks to Petteri for a good time both on-stage and off (I had a chance to catch him at a proper show in Oulu, too) and great energy and attitude in a portrait sitting.
And for a bonus, here's a video of him, live on stage, putting on a tune you have absolutely heard before: