A few weeks before last Christmas, I became aware of Project 52. This is a web site that makes “real world assignments” to those learning the aspects of commercial photography. Since this is an area of photography that I would really like to get into, I thought that I would have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by participating in this exercise.

From the Project 52 web site, Don Giannatti explains: “What does “real world assignments” mean? It means you will be given assignments that are similar in scope and diversity as any commercial photographer in a small town. It means authentic work that is exactly the kind you will get the day your shingle gets posted. We work hard to make assignments that both challenge the creative, and produce work that could end up in your portfolio.”

The 4th assignment for 2012 was to make an “Editorial Portrait of an Entrepreneur”. You can find the assignment description here: Project 52 2012 Assignment 4.  As you can quickly determine, the assignment can be “faux”, or stated another way – “pretend”. Thus explains the photo at the beginning of this post.

Here is my lighting diagram that I used to create the photo above:

Hint: Click on any image to see a larger version.

The assignment required 2 photos: one showing the entrepreneur in their environment (see above), and one photo to be a close-up of the entrepreneur. For the close up shot, I simply took the camera off of the tripod and handheld it as I physically got closer to her, which you can see here:

If you would like to hear what Don had to say about my photos, you can go to the Assignment 4 web page, scroll down to where you see the “Audio Crit for Page One”, click on the Play button, and let the audio begin downloading. Once the download progress is about 50% complete, simply drag the leading edge of the white slider to the 31:15 mark.