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Still catching up.
I have this theory that at this point in my life it's probably worth more bang for the buck to invest in lighting rather than in glass. As much as I love glass, I feel like the value-added right now is light control (or at least being cognizant of what light is available) and post. Buying, say, an 85/1.2 or a longer lens like the 70-200/2.8 isn't really going to change that much of what I do. The matter is only exacerbated by the "parity rule," which is a rule that I came up with a few years ago that required that every dollar spent on new gear be paid for with a dollar derived directly from photography. An interesting feature of this rule is that, at present, even if I had won the $500 million Powerball jackpot (??!) last week, I still wouldn't have been able to buy more gear. The purpose of the rule is to prevent me from blowing a huge pile of money on gear for minimal gain, and then get distracted and not use it.
Anyway, the upshot of this is that I have been experimenting a little with hard light, rather than the usual clamshell lighting that I use for residency portraits and so on. The impetus was a set of classic portraits of various famous surgeons and physicians and scientists that line the main hallway of Brigham and Women's Hospital, which I walk by nearly daily. They are almost all black and white, hard light on the face, dark field. Nearly all are also old white men, but I suppose that is the history of the hospital. I invited some folks over ostensibly for dinner but actually to try this out. All the images were taken with a remotely-triggered bare flash shining almost directly on the faces, sometimes with a second triggered flash to bring out hair. Asians can be difficult like that.
