Contender: Dhrumil S. Desai

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Copyright © Dhrumil S. Desai

Photographer:
Dhrumil S. Desai

Where are you based?
Downtown Anaheim, California

When did you take the photograph?
This photograph was made an hour before sunset in the month of November last year.

What equipment did you use?
Canon EOS 7D with EF 17-40mm f/4L and a bare Speedlite 580EX II

Please describe how you got this photo?
I got a chance to make the portfolio for this upcoming actor here in Los Angeles. While scouting locations for the shoot, I came across this old Gothic looking church in downtown Anaheim. I proposed the use of those doors with the actor dressed stylish, yet casual. Keeping in mind the end result, with layout being similar to that of a magazine, one of the crops was chosen with the actor looking directly at the camera while holding the lapels of his jacket and the other photo being a close headshot type crop that you see here. For this image, I directed the actor to give me his side profile instead of a straight on shot of his face.

The 580EX II flash was fired wirelessly from camera left and directly onto the subject's face without any light modifiers to bring out a clear jaw line. The aperture was set to ƒ/4 so that the depth of field can be used to make the design of the gothic doors not so prominent in the image. I like to get up close when making headshots of a subject to make the viewer feel that personal connection going on between the photographer and the subject on stage. That was brought out in the image with the use of 40mm focal length.

Did you use any special techniques?
Lightroom was used for the post processing of this image. First, the image was converted to an appropriate black and white photo. And then, the warm effects were added in the highlights of the image using the split toning section in Lightroom.