Ever had that feeling that, if you had said nothing at all, things might have turned out better? Or even, if you had said less, you could have achieved a better outcome? Well, I have. I like to talk, and as they say, talk is fight, right? No. It shouldn’t be, at least from my perspective. The reason is simple. When you talk, you can’t listen at the same time, and without listening, you cannot learn. One of the many goals I have for this year is to learn more – listen more. And for that, I probably need to shut up more. Also, shutting up more makes sure that saying something that, with more consideration would have never been uttered, stays where it should. Obviously, shut up may sound a little harsh, but I think it conveys the idea rather clearly. All powerful mantras are simple, n’est-ce pas?

Well, as a friendly reminder (and, not to forget, for the fun of doing it) I decided to transform these two wise words into a photograph. Featuring myself as the model. Here’s my trial-and-error thought and work process of creating this image: I had a backlit situation in mind, so I set up two lights in the back aiming at the camera. Nice rim on the cheeks, positioning corrected. Got rid of the snoots after some test shots – the flare looks stupid with the snoot and zooming in the heads to 85mm did a good-enough job to control the beam spread. Alright, now, the background should still look dark, I want those two lights come out of dark like car headlights in the night. However, my face needs some light. OK, softbox camera up right to my face. Damn – I don’t have a boom, so the light falls on the background (which is the bamboo room divider in my smallish room). When I take back some of the power, the background stays dark. But my face, too. Idea: Handheld reflector from above – catch some of that background light and direct it to my face. That worked. A little too well, though – the background caught some light again. So far, 12 minutes spent on the shoot – that’s enough. Photoshop will have to fix the rest. And I’ll buy that boom. Soon.