Batman Broods — Behind The Shot
Batman broods. It’s what he does best. So when I made this portrait of the 12" Batman statue from McFarlane Toys I decided to see if I could convey the mood the Caped Crusader is so well known for.
It will likely appear too dark on your monitor. I’ve even added some brightness to the JPEG that isn’t going to be in the file I send to the printer just so you can see it better.
The point of the shot is the shadows with just a kiss of light on the model’s face.
I’ve seen this kind of lighting in movies and that is what inspired me to try this approach. This sort of very subtle lighting is my favorite — which probably means most people won’t like it — but in case you want to see my setup — it’s pretty simple.
I placed the figure in the Impact Photo Pro LED Booth 400 — https://bhpho.to/3NTpLxQ — I then used a LumeCube Panel Pro — https://bhpho.to/3ulpqgB mounted to a Platypod Ultra — https://bhpho.to/3oZfBlb and bounced into a silver and white bounce card placed in front of the model. I set the Panel Pro to show a blue light. (I love not needing to bother with a gel. Just pick your color and go.)
I used a Lume Cube 2.0 Mini LED Light — https://bhpho.to/3L32iL7 with a grid and a snoot — on its lowest power setting and laying on the table and pushing just a tiny bit of white light into the bounce card.
I used a Sony A7C mounted to a Platyball Ergo Ball Head — https://bhpho.to/3Agde4u and that mounted to a Platypod Extreme — https://bhpho.to/3bIIAX3. I used the Sony — FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS to get close and the rest is history.
I did very little post-processing. Mostly cropping and then some vignetting added with the ACR filter in Photoshop. Otherwise SOOC.
For a full list of my toy photo gear and props go to: bit.ly/toyphotogear
Remember, toys are joy.
