My friends Tim and Nazir recently hired me to shoot portraits of them for their new website. They wanted the images to be a bit moody and dark, not the typical business portrait you would expect… I shot them in my studio, lit with a deep octa box and window light for fill.

In December 2014 I went to Cuba with my good friend, the talented filmmaker
Jan Stollberg. We mostly stayed in Havana but also explored the valley of Viñales and the beautiful landscape surrounding it. We both went to Cuba to shoot personal projects.
My series is about the different men living in Cuba. Each person represents the place where I found them. I wanted to show the diversity of the people from the small boy to the old man.
I used my Profoto B1 in combination with an Elinchrom Rotalux Deep Octa to light them. My goal was to achieve a nice balance between the ambient light and the flash.
I wanted to thank Jan for the big help during each shooting in assisting me with the lighting and our local guides who showed us amazing places and for translating.

This is Jan’s amazing film from our trip! 

and here are a few behind the scenes images by Jan

Finally I had the time to edit these images from the shoot with Mario. It was one of the last sunny days at the end of August. I really like this raw background texture and the sunlight in the shots, but I still wanted the light quality and control from the studio. I used one Profoto B1 with a beauty dish as my main light on him. The rest is just the ambient light…