Dorrington Award Portrait - Alexander Vlahos

I work as a scientist in a research lab at the University of Toronto. Our lab is in a research institute named the Donnelly CCBR after a benefactor, Terrence Donnelly, who's ongoing commitment has helped fund the construction of our building as well as supporting research activities. The building we inhabit is only a little over 10 years old, and has a number of interesting features that make a great backdrop for photography. One of those features is the exterior brick walls of the adjacent, much older, Rosebrugh building which acts as one of the walls of our centre and encloses a bamboo garden on the ground floor.

Recently, a number of students in our institute were awarded a scholarship named the Jennifer Dorrington Award, which is given to graduate students for excellence in their research projects. I was asked by the staff writer for our institute, Jovana Drinjakovic, for assistance in crafting the portraits of one of the students, Alexander Vlahos. Jovana was writing up a profile for each of the three winners this year and was looking for some advice on lighting setups for an accompanying portrait.

The first shot we setup was a simple portrait using the decorative brick walls and windows as a backdrop. Light levels were fairly low in this corridor, so I stated by setting up a speedlight to the camera left aimed at the brick wall background to provide the base level illumination for the shot. The key light was a second speedlight positioned camera left firing through a translucent umbrella. Finally a third bare speedlight was added on camera right, was hand held by Jovana and aimed at the side of Alex's head and shoulders to provide separation. The camera/lens was a 5DmkIV with 24-70mm f/4 shot wide open and at various focal lengths.

Next, we moved ourselves (and my gear) into the lab, where we tried to set up an "action" shot of Alex at work. I switched out my lens for a 35mm f/2 and set the aperture for f/2.8 and the ISO up to 800 to get a reasonable background exposure for the lab behind Alex. A speed light was attached to the top shelf of the workbench and Jovana held up a 4' circular reflector (no cover, 1-2 stop shoot through diffusion) between the light and Alex to act as our key light. I positioned the camera below the diffuser, close to the bench top while Alex played around with some old cell culture plates (that were destined for the bin). I had to balance out the colour temp difference between the ambient and the un-geled speed light in photoshop and added a little extra exposure to his face.

I would like to extend a big thanks to both Jovanna and Alex for being a great assistant and subject for this shoot, and to congratulate Alex on his scholarship. Hopefully we'll have the chance to work together on another photo project again in the future. You can read more about Alexander Vlahos' work in in Jovana's excellent writeup HERE