The Great Gatsby ...

I was asked to photograph a Holiday event a few weeks ago for a client in a fancy hotel in the Gas Lamp District of downtown San Diego. They had reserved a lovely courtyard and as luck would have it was the very night the weather forecast was calling for heavy rain. Bye the way, heavy rain in San Diego is what people in other parts of the country might refer to as "scattered showers". In any case, my assistant and I had scoped out the location a few days earlier which was a brilliant decision on my part since it gave me a few photo options should the weather turn out to be a problem - which of course, it was! The party had a Prohibition theme which made it a lot more visually exciting. Instead of using the traditional canvas backdrop, I used the flavor of the hotel to give me a realistic look of the era. There was a great bar with a killer staircase that worked perfectly for group shots. My assistant and I worked together with a 2 light portable flash setup combined with the ambient light of the rooms which gave us the lighting and the look we were after. The client had requested to have the option of black and white and color prints so it was important to use dramatic lighting. Later that night I photographed the entire group from the balcony above down onto the courtyard …. fortunately right before the big rains came. The rest of the night we took photos in the backup room, complete with an old time jazz band, gambling tables and a lot of foolish behavior. All in all, a fun night!

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