The Diver

When I received the call from Harvard Business Review to make a portrait of Olympic gold medalist, AIDS activist and actor Greg Louganis, needless to say, I was excited to work with him. Given that the piece would reflect back on Louganis’ life to date, the art director of the magazine had the idea to photograph Louganis in an empty pool. Finding such a space might have proven challenging, but thankfully, anything is possible in Hollywood.

We arrived at the pool an hour before Louganis to scout and make sure that we could anticipate where the sun would be. As it turned out, the sun would sit fairly low in the sky, but it would hit part of the pool’s white interior, so our angle to shoot would be somewhat determined for us.

The sun was blinding when it hit the white paint that covered the side and bottom of the pool, so we hung a 10-foot piece of black velvet on a background kit behind the camera. (I carry black velvet in my kit on nearly every shoot; it’s extremely useful as a background as well as a tool to help in situations like this one, cutting reflections that would make subjects squint.) Using a Profoto 7B pack and Pro 7 Head inside a Photoflex 5-foot OctoDome, I lit Louganis from the right. The assignment was for a black-and-white image, so I was happy to have a contrast-heavy shot in the end.

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III Lens: 24-70mm II
Exposure: f/11 at 1/160 sec ISO: 400
Lighting: Profoto 7B with Pro 7 Head, Photoflex Medium OctoDome (outer diffusion only), Sekonic Light Meter (reading f/11.5)
Miscellaneous: PocketWizard Transceivers, Gitzo tripod with Manfrotto pan head, Giotto Background Kit, black velvet, Hoodman Memory Card, CamRanger, Apple iPad Retina

The Art Director

I think personal projects for photographers is an incredibly useful tool to keep busy and have a body of work that is solely your own. Over the last three years, I’ve been working on a personal project titled “Right Next Door,” where I photograph interesting people living all around us, hiding in plain sight. This is George Lois, the legendary art director whom Mad Men is loosely based on—“minus the cigarettes, booze and womanizing,” he tells me.

For this project, I wanted to keep my setup as simple and consistent as possible across the board, so I decided that in each location, I would fire a bare Profoto B1 head with a reflector into a white wall or white ceiling. The key is minimizing the equipment, and unlike a lot of my other work, dropping the technical aspect of my normal approach to lighting was a nice challenge for me to overcome.

As soon as I arrive at my location, I look for a good spot to bounce my light, set up, take a quick meter reading and am good to go. This image is actually an outtake from the one I chose of Lois for the project. I loved it so much in black and white that I used it for the cover of my promo magazine, IAN.

Camera: Canon 5D Mark IV Lens: 24-70mm II
Exposure: f/7.1 at 1/160 sec ISO: 250
Lighting: Profoto B1 with Air Remote, Westcott 72-inch Silver Umbrella with Diffusion Panel, Sekonic Light Meter (reading f/8)
Miscellaneous: Hoodman Memory Card, CamRanger, Apple iPad Retina

The Fitness Model

I like to ask a lot of questions before a shoot to give me a sense of what kind of story my subject wants to tell, and from there I use lighting to help tell that story. For this shoot with long-time fitness model Diego Sebastian, we wanted to create a series of moody images for him to use for his business, social media and website.

One wouldn’t normally think of a big, soft source like the Westcott 72-inch silver umbrella with diffusion as being “moody,” but when it’s set at a higher angle, combined with Diego’s hood and pose, the mood is mostly there. The advantage of the umbrella is that I can maintain information in the shadows so they don’t go pitch black, making my control over the final image much better.

For a strobe, I used my Profoto B1 head—it is super portable—and the Air Remote, which is fantastic, especially when you don’t want to interrupt the shoot flow by making adjustments on a pack. In post, I doubled my base layer with a multiply mask layer to add darkness, painting away the areas I want to be lighter.

Camera: Canon 5D Mark IV Lens: 24-70mm II
Exposure: f/7.1 at 1/160 sec
ISO: 250
Lighting: Profoto B1 with Air Remote, Westcott 72-inch Silver Umbrella with Diffusion Panel, Sekonic Light Meter (reading f/8)
Miscellaneous: Hoodman Memory Card, CamRanger, Apple iPad Retina

Ian Spanier is an award-winning portrait, sports and lifestyle photographer, as well as an author and lecture, living in Los Angeles.

Related: Three Ways To Remix the Usual Portrait Lighting Setup

6 Portrait Photographers Share Their Biggest Lighting Challenges

17 Lights and Modifiers for On-Location Shooting