Ivan The Mysterious

Ivan The Mysterious

A couple of months ago I rejoined Soho House and fairly quickly met Ivan in the exercise classes they have.

Soho House was always good for meeting new people and potentially new clients.

Ivan became a Soho House friend and then a client. Result.

He was keen to do shots outside which suited me just fine.

We met up at my favourite faux studio near the magic fountains.

It was bloody hot. The weather is definitely changing and this year seems like a phase transition across the globe.

Luckily the place it like to work has options and one of these is shade. Some body had painted hd however done a very bad repair on my preferred wall with a terribly mismatched shade so we moved to the other side.

I was really enjoying the look I was getting with Ivan. He was not looking for smiling shots. He said he is an actor and needed something more moody which suited me just fine.

But god it was hot. And hot means sweaty.

I was using my normal small beauty dish on a Godox AD200, with some fill.

The peculiar effect of the location came from us being in the shade but with a very bright street sandwiched between darker elements behind us. This created a band across his eyes and with me is the middle, forming a thin vertical, that basically gave him cats eyes. 

This was a curious effect that will probably need toning down in post.

I say probably because I have withheld working on the images as Ivan disappeared and I usually prefer to have an official selection to experiment on for myself.

But I feel there are many good images from this shoot and I won’t wait too much longer if Ivan the Mysterious doesn’t reappear soon.

Anyway whatever happens the location will be my go to studio when not doing the ubiquitous white background headshots.