Send in the Clowns

I haven't been that inspired lately to take photos and by inspired, I mean that it's been way too cold to go outside and shoot. While not a really good excuse, I really haven't been motivated. However, last night I stayed up after arriving home and around one in the morning, I shot this self-portrait.

It is inspired by Frank Sinatra's "Send in the Clowns", which is a song written by Stephen Sondheim for the musical A Little Night Music. It is a song of sorrow and regret and while not dramatized, Sinatra's voice is very moving, which really speaks to the talent of the very celebrated singer. One thing I love about Sinatra is his ability to portray the role of the person singing and emote the feelings as if he was the one deeply affected enough to have written the lyrics. He really makes it easy for us to relate to the song. I believe all of us have found ourselves at the end of a relationship that had at one time sparked this deep passion within us.

Whenever I listened to the song, I imagined Sinatra standing on stage with only a spotlight on him as he conveyed his story about his heartache in front of an audience. And so, I set up a flash perhaps three foot taller than me and three feet away. I was sure that I would have to use full power on my Nikon SB-25 speedlight because I wanted to kill all ambient light around me. I shot at f/22 and 1/250 shutter speed so I would only get the flash. I set up a foam board as a flag to limit spill of the flash on the back wall. I took the photo and in Photoshop, I simply just placed it on a new layer of black. I wanted quite a bit of negative space to reflect the sorrow and loneliness of the song.