It’s newsletter no. 3 and it feels great to write and rethink what happened. I draw much inspiration from people talking about their work, and this journal, newsletter, or whatever you want to call it, is my try to give something back.
After months of documentary work in politics and business, 2022 ended with a fun and creative portrait session. My friend and musician Daniel Orta Bouza asked me to shoot portraits for his upcoming music releases and overall appearance. We wanted a location that feels industrial and somehow like a studio at the same time. Most importantly, we searched for many settings in a short time.
We shot this at Kommune2010 in Offenbach. It is an old industrial factory hall and event location I never discovered before. Besides the main hall, there is a stage with lighting, a bar, a fully equipped recording studio, and some other smaller rooms. This mix of locations fits perfectly.
The idea was to mix and match hard and soft studio light, natural light, scenes of the location, and paper backdrops to get a lot of variation with the tools I have set up. Also, we changed cloth a lot, so the pictures last him for many applications.
I mostly went for my Nikon Z7ii with the 24–70mm f2.8. Only the black-and-white shots while playing the guitar needed the faster aperture of the 50mm f1.8. To document everything I filmed some scenes with the GoPro on the side. You can see parts of the footage in the header video. For the flashlight, I used the Godox AD400 with the standard round reflector or a 130 cm umbrella – only one flash to stay flexible plus the light we already had there or some additional white reflectors.
To close this issue I highly recommend listening to some of Daniel’s Songs on Spotify, for example, his just-released single “Gemischtwarenladen”.
I really hope you enjoyed this insight into one of my portrait sessions. Let me know if there is something missing you would’ve liked to read or see in this issue of The Journal Frame and check out my other posts if you like. You are dearly invited to ask me anything!
Behind The Scenes: ORTA