Muhammad Bekjanov, a pro-democracy Uzbeck newspaper editor who endured of 18 years of torture as a political prisoner, was reunited with his family in the United StatesFor this week. Colin Mulvany/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
For this editorial portrait of a former political prisoner who was recently reunited with his family in the U.S., I wanted to use strong, dramatic lighting to reflect his resolve he used to resist his captures. I set my Profoto B2 strobes up in his daughter’s living room while Bekjanov was being interviewed.
The background was a light brick wall above the fireplace. I placed one B2 head with a 1×3 stripbox ( vertical) camera right and slightly behind as my key light. For the rim light, I used my Profoto OCF beauty dish camera left. This is the opposite of what I usually do. My standard is to use the beauty dish as my key. There was some ambient window light in the room, which I overpowered using high-speed sync at 1/400 of a second, Iso 125 at f/2.8.
From this camera setting I took a close up shot of his face in TTL, then kicked my Profoto Air Remote over to manual to lock in the setting. I made a plus half-stop adjustment to key light and dialed the rim light down 1 stop to keep the subject’s gray hair from blowing out. This is the first time I’ve used the strip light as a key. I’m liking the look! Nikon D850, Nikon 70-200 2.8
Colin Mulvany is a Emmy-nominated multimedia producer and staff photographer at The Spokesman-Review, a 60,000-circulation newspaper that covers eastern Washington and North Idaho.
After 18 years as a staff photojournalist, Mulvany made the transition to online storytelling by becoming his newspaper’s first multimedia producer in 2004. Since then, he has produced hundreds of video feature stories and audio slideshows for his newspaper’s Spokesman.com website.
As multimedia editor in 2008, Mulvany trained 14 reporters, photographers and online producers to shoot and edit video. He also helped the editorial department transition to a more multimedia-focused workflow.
Mulvany has been honored for his photography and multimedia in Pictures of the Year International, Best of Photojournalism, Society of Newspaper Design, the National Headliners Awards and the Northwest Regional Emmies.
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