Ricardo Sevilla

Being that I am new to using lighting equipment, I have been looking for models willing to do TF. I asked Randell if he was interested, and he said yes.

I didn't know of what place to shoot at, I just knew I wanted to shoot something, anything. I proposed the concept of "Prisoner tied to a tree". I looked through Google Earth and found some decent looking trees at Tropical Park. Cool, got a location. Now I need rope. My wife and I stopped by Home Depot to buy some rope, but I made sure it was a natural looking rope, not one of those plastic ropes you see now a days.

I ordered 25Ft of this rope and it cost me $16.75. When we arrived at Tropical park, we scouted a bit for a good tree. When we found one, we noticed that there was some type of cheerleaders gathering several feet away. We ignored it and began setting up. Everyone kept looking at us, but for some reason it did not move me. Normally I would feel too shy to work comfortably, but I think  the reason why I felt comfortable was because my wife was with me assisting me with setting up the lights around this tree. Or because Randell looked silly in a pirate outfit so perhaps the attention was on him! lol ^_^

I tie up Randell to the tree with the 25ft Rope and an additional 50ft rope that's 1/3rd as thick as the 50ft one. I learned that we needed more rope to make the scene look realistic We began to shoot anyways. This is after all practice for me with lighting equipment anyways. While shooting, a guy with his wife and kids came up to me and said something along the lines of, "SO you're a photographer too? nice! What power lights are you using? Ohh 800...nice! Oh man, what lens is that? I want to buy that one. That's the 5DMark II right? I have one of those and a 7D at home. Hey, can I see the lens? Can I hold it?"

I lost concentration. I declined his offer of letting him hold my camera so that he can see how my lens works, but after several more attempts, I gave in. I wrap the strap around my fist and let him try it. "whoa that's cool!" was his response, followed by "OK, I'm going to bring my 7D from home right now. You just wait". Sure enough he comes back hows shows me his 7D with a battery pack, along with a lens that proudly wears the red ring.

I wasn't sure how to react other than to say, "that's a very good lens". After speaking with him briefly, he goes his way and I loose focus of this tree and decide to move on. We stumble on some rocks and decide to shoot there. Was pretty straight forward from there on. I have decided not to publish the tree shots, as I feel I can shoot the concept at a better location, so those will be placed on hold.

Anyways, the results from my 2nd attempt at shooting with lights is above. Images are unedited save for some coloring and removal of the bar code from the bottle.

I'd like to thank Randell for being such a great sport about this shoot. Very cool guy to shoot with and I'd recommend him to any photographer.

Hope you guys like the pics, mi mateys! Arggg!

-RS