Photographing Nanotech: A Scholar Athlete Portrait

Each spring, the Post-Dispatch compiles a list of scholar athletes from around the region. I photographed Jake Drysdale – a runner and someone who’s working  to remove air pollution using nanotechnology.

David Kvidahl’s story explains the details of Drysdale’s background. We met in the late afternoon, a few hours before sunset. I used a single off-camera fill light to make him pop from the background and produce a bright, vivid image. 

He brought several of the tools he uses to spray the pollution-reducing solution onto the sign and we used those as props for the portrait.

This is the photo that ran in the print edition:

This is the setup of the off-camera light:

It was a Canon speedlight into an umbrella.

Here’s a comparison of the strobe (though a bit overexposed in this instance) vs. no strobe:

And one other photo: