December Challenge: Day 10 – Cachaulo VanLaanen
Cachaulo is a co-worker of mine at Quartus Engineering (he's an engineer too). Outside of work, he's into skiing and playing rugby for the San Diego Old Aztecs — home games are at Robb Field in Ocean Beach, in case you live nearby and want to see some rugby action. He's also a photographer, but has yet to start up his Flickr account. Cachaulo attributes his lack of a smile to the Christmas party hangover and/or running out of coffee in the break room today.
I shot this scene with my 10mm lens, so the hallway looks way longer than it really is. Cachaulo was really standing about 6 or 7 feet from me, and I helped to light the scene with my wireless flash held in one hand and the camera in the other. The fluorescent lights originally turned out yellow, so I toyed around with the hue adjustments until I settled on the “blue” look you see here — I had to mask out Cachaulo so he didn't look like a Smurf.
To see the rest of my December Challenge photos, check the “Challenge” category here on the blog or visit my Flickr Set.
Patricia
December 10, 2007Brian, I like the unique perspective you used here. The mood, for me, is very stark, lonely and empty. In fact, your workplace, with nothing on the walls of the hallway, looks like a very antiseptic place. Is it? Or is there a lot of color in those offices? 🙂
Brian Auer
December 10, 2007LOL, this is just the fire escape hallway at the center of our wing of the building. The offices are arranged in a horseshoe around the outside of this interior hallway. There are also hallways that are open to the offices and bullpens, and our work area is very much open and inviting. We just use this hallway to get from one side to the other without having to walk all the way around the end of the wing. I’ll probably take another shot from within the office area sometime soon.
Patricia
December 10, 2007Oh, OK! Come to think of it, we have a stairwell in our brand-new, colorfully decorated offices that is stark white; very boring. Of course, it’s not representative of the rest of the building. Looking forward to seeing other parts of your office later. 🙂
Antoine Khater
December 11, 2007It keeps on getting better day after day (of course omit the one of yesterday 👿 ) Nice perspective Brian
Brian Auer
December 11, 2007Thanks Antione! C’mon now, the one yesterday wasn’t that bad, was it? I guess it probably means more to me than anybody else. I felt that it captured how I was feeling that day — really gray, dark, and gloomy. The full-sized image is actually much more fun to look at because of all the textures. I shot it at ISO 3200 to help with that. I don’t know… nobody else really seemed to like it though.
the_wolf_brigade
December 11, 2007I liked yesterday’s, probably because I could identify with the mood. I find that taking a self portrait tends to lift my spirits. In fact any form of photography lifts my spirits!
As for today’s, I like the distant perspective that the 10mm lens has given it, and I really like the looming shadow behind him. I always try and eliminate shadows from flash in my work, but here it adds to the creepy ‘Resident Evil’ feel of the hall.
inspirationbit
December 11, 2007very interesting shot. Brian! Love the perspective.
I’m not sure whether or not you’ve dedicated a post to various lenses and what effects are possible with each of them, but as a photonewbie I would really find that kind of posts very useful. There are so many lenses out there, I wonder which one would you recommend to start with? Which lenses are the absolute must have? I know that it mostly depends on the type of pictures one wants to shoot, but what if I like several things: portraits, macro, landscapes, night, does it mean that I absolutely need to get separate lenses for each of those types?
Skedonk
December 11, 2007Nice shot.
It would be interesting to see a similar setup with him a bit closer to the camera and his shadow straight along the wall (that is, hold the flash closer to the wall at about eye level)