The question: “Do you have a Jazz photo you would be willing to donate to a fund raising auction?”
The answer: “No, but let’s go make one, can you help find a willing model?”
Local saxophonist, Dave Webster, made himself available for a quick photo shoot as the sun disappeared over Cook Inlet. It was cold, but he patiently made music for 20 minutes while I worked at capturing an image worthy of occupying a jazz enthusiast’s wall space. The goal was an image that not only says jazz, but also tells a little bit more – Something about jazz by the sea. The photo was framed by the Art Shop Gallery, then auctioned at a fund raising event for the 2008 Homer Jazz Fest.
The photo has grown on me, that’s why you’re seeing it posted here. Lately I’ve found that when doing an initial edit on a photo shoot an image will very subtly make an impression in my memory. Those images then quietly circulate in my mind daily. This is exciting! There has been a lot of time spent analyzing photos in the recent years- soul searching in efforts to define what type of image I love most.
What could be more satisfying for a photographer than to be enchanted by one of his own images?
Below are a few other images from the shoot:
Tech notes: Canon 1DmIII camera body, Canon 24-70 2.8 lens. We were a few minutes late to catch the 15 minutes of sunlight that day so I rigged up a 580 EX II strobe light bouncing off a 22″ silver umbrella. The strobe was triggered by the canon ST-E2 wireless transmitter and dialed down about 1-2 stops for most of the shots. All photos adjusted in Lightroom, signature added in photoshop cs3 and ‘saved for web’. The featured photo was exported from lightroom as a color image, then a layer mask was used to desaturate everything but the saxophone.
Thanks to Dave Webster for modeling.