Peter Simonsen
CEO, AZ State Savings & Credit Union
Glendale, AZ ~ 2:06 PM on 4.16.2003

Environmental Portrait of Cecilia Navarro for the American Bar Association magazine ABA Journal.

Andrew Danish, the art director Cisco Systems iQ magazine asked for an environmental portrait of Peter Simonsen. This was a cover story for the July/August 2003 issue. One of the single images ran on the cover and this triptych ran across 2 pages inside.

When I scouted the location, I found this impressive wall and knew immediately that we would shoot here. When we started setting up the lighting, the sun was actually coming through the open wall space so I wanted to keep that look. The option was to open the ambient exposure (shutter speed) or set up a strobe to replicate the look of the sun... of course the sun keeps moving, so the strobe gives us a consistent look for each exposure. Also, if I opened up the shutter speed, then the sky, trees, and the metal fixture at the top of the wall would get lighter in exposure and I didn't want that to happen.

Strobist info / Lighting: four Dynalites
Medium Chimera, camera right
10" reflector w/black wrap to light wall foreground.
10" reflector w/black wrap to light wall background.
10" reflector on other side of wall to replicate the sun.

Nikon 35-70mm lens, 81B filter
Exposure: 250th/sec @ f/16
Film: Fuji Astia RAP 100
Photoshop: almost none.
Photo Assistant: Lyle Moultrie