Back Story

One afternoon whilst replying to DM’s on Instagram I came across a message from Ricardo stating that he would be in Barcelona for a brief period in the summer and available to shoot if I’d be interested. Of course I jumped at the chance, I mean those cheekbones alone! :) I ended up spending a large portion of summer in London so in the end we only had a very small window of opportunity between Ricardo’s commitments and my own. I suggested he come in to the studio for an hour between agendas and not add too much pressure with styling or planning. Sweeney (my studio content creator) came in and shot some video clips of us improvising (video below). What unfolded was a synergy of two creatives coming together with their art forms, resulting in some pretty beautiful, emotive and elegant ballet portraits.

I particularly love these black and white moodier portraits, shot with one high angled light facing away from the white wall to create a black background without needing to get up the ladder and hang paper

I think the natural light shots lend themselves well to Ricardo’s warm, open and generous personality. With just the use of the window light at around midday on a white infinity cove. These photos required zero retouch, I simply added my Adagio preset and some sharpening to the eyes, nothing more was needed. Shot with a prime 50mm on Sony A74.

I then shut out the natural light of the studio and using one profoto flash with a zoom modifier I angled the light just right of centre in order to get the contrasting shadow on the wall.

Shot with 24-70mm Canon at f9 S.250 ISO 200

I wish we’d had more time and I hope to have Ricardo back in the studio again soon.