Portraits from the Plateau — Sylvain Grand’Maison

I took this shot for fel­low friend, art direc­tor and pod­caster Syl­vain Grand’Maison about a month ago. Syl­vain pro­duces an extremely suc­cess­ful French pod­cast here in Que­bec that fea­tures great pod­safe music,‚ great artists and does it all while drink­ing great beer and talk­ing about social media and podcasting.

Syl­vain needed some pho­tog­ra­phy done so we got together for a few hours and clicked the shut­ter. He specif­i­cally had a con­cept in mind and we focused mainly on his con­cept (can’t talk about it yet). After the shoot though, we also took some casual shots and many of them came out quite nice includ­ing this one.

Syl­vain Grand’Maison

Sylvain’s blond hair and eyes came out really well against this black back­ground and both he and I really dig this shot. In terms of light­ing, I used a Quan­tum flash in an umbrella at 45 degrees and a reflec­tor on the oppo­site site. I did a bit of soft­en­ing on his body and added some glow to his hair in post so that his face is the most strik­ing ele­ment in the shot. Exif data is 1/80 at F-7.0 ISO 400 at 75mm.