We all have our side projects— build a Napoleonic War frigate in a bottle, clean the gutters, get those heirloom bulbs in the ground, organize our stamp collection from countries that no longer exist e.g. I also have a few side projects. One is my Stock Certificate Project (that I really should devote more time to). Another is my ROYGBIV project.
It is not uncommon that friends ask me for photos of themselves for this or that. When they do, I try to squeeze the ROYGBIV project in. Basically, I try to position my subjects outside, in front of some primarily colored background as well as one white background then assemble the results into whatever you call a piece of art that involves four separate scenes… whatever is past a tryptic I guess.
Anyway, one of my oldest friends Kevin Bankston was in town for the holidays and he asked that I shoot a few shots of him. It should be said that Kevin is probably my most accomplished and admirable friend. He has worked for the ACLU, EFF and is making a big move to Washington to further lobby for and protect our online freedoms. If you watch, you will certainly see him on the television or quoted in all the big magazines. This guys is someone to watch.
The condition was that we drive around until I could find some suitable locations for the ROYGBIV project. For those who slept through that day in science class ROYGBIV is just an acronym for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. These are roughly the shades we see in the visible light spectrum. In my opinion, solid and strong colors make for nice backgrounds if you can get the right subject to background distance so the background becomes a blur of radiant color.
All technical mumbo-jumbo aside, I like the way they look and you can see a prior one taken of my good friend Chris Brooks here. Also included in this batch are some of the un-cropped originals that I did a little more tweaking on.
If you’re going to shoot portraits of your buddies for free (and why wouldn’t you?) you might as well make them work a little bit for it and direct their efforts towards your broader schemes. So, thanks Kevin. You are now installment 2 in the slow-moving ROYGBIV Project.
Everything was shot natural light with a Canon 5D MKII and a Canon 135mmm f/2 L USM and edited in Aperture and Nik Color Efex Pro 4.
