A few month back I got a call from the Art Director of the magazine who asked if I wanted to take on an assignment. There were running a feature story on Centurions areas America. One of these centurions was Fred Sheill from Au Gres, Michigan. He will be turning 101 years old this year and still runs his 10 acre daylily farm.
The shoot:
cameras:
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon Mark III
lens:
Canon 24-70 f/2.8 (cover photo)
Canon 135 f/2
lights and misc:
Canon 580EX II
2-Pocketwizards TTL Flex5
EZ Box 15x15 softbox
Sunbounce reflector
Cheap 4' diffuser
We got there about 9:30am and had some nice cloud cover. However, as soon as we were finished scouting the location and pulled the gear out we were blasted with the sun. The harsh sun light brought on the harsh shadows, so we pulled out the diffuser and reflector and soften up the portrait. Here is one of the first test shots with the softbox, no reflector or diffuser.
After adding the diffuser and reflector and finally got a nicely exposed shot. This one would end up running as the cover photo (photo at the top of the blog). Fred used his tractor to get around the 10 acre farm but what was strange was a gaggle of geese followed him around.
We couldn't get very close to the geese but Fred feeds them everyday. Seagull also started to which was pretty hilarious watching the geese chase them off.
We were there for about 1.5 hours and shot 251 photos. We set up 3 different portraits of Fred in different locations of his garden which was in the shape of an "L". The rest of the shots were just documenting how Fred gets around and tends to the farm.
