Dramatic Model Portraits // Chicago // Mark Brouwer

My series in dramatic portraiture continues with Mark Brouwer - a model from Chicago with comedy and acting skills. So imagine this session: photography, laughter, fun conversation, and music - life is really good when these elements come together. Mark was fun to work with - he kept things lively, and I appreciate that. I am typically the one making sure everyone is laughing at my photo shoots. So having Mark contribute to the liveliness that day was really fun.

I wanted to create some dark images with Mark. I asked if he could bring clothing that would work well with the "dark" themed photo shoot, which led to a conversation about what I meant by "dark". He mentioned that he had a dark green trench coat. Perfect. The trench coat ended up looking great on screen. I also wanted the lighting to be more harsh than with my previous dramatic shoots. I made sure to stay away from softboxes and only used gridspots and bare-bulbs on my strobes.

You can check out photos from previous model photo shoots: Camille Kurowski, Debra Lopez, and Ankita Baxti.

Here are a few of my favorite images from our photo shoot with Mark. The final composite images will be on a new blog post soon:

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Behind The Scenes


My many thanks to Mark for his professionalism and humor! I hope you have an amazing career in modeling and acting. You rock dude! And a super thank you to my amazing wife, Christina, for being so supportive, for doing a great job on Mark's hair, and for rocking out the Flip Mino HD. Thanks babe!

The Set-Up

  • Nikon D700 - Shooting in RAW
  • Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 lens
  • Alien Bee 400ws (5 strobes)
  • Medium Softbox (2)
  • 22" Beauty Dish
  • Pocket Wizard (2)
  • 13" MacBook
  • Sofortbild - For shooting tethered to my MacBook. It's free for Nikon shooters!
  • Lightroom 2 - For exposure and color adjustments
  • Photoshop CS4 - For all major retouching and background removal
  • Rock On! info [at] ottorascon.com | my portfolio | facebook | twitter | 773.430.4785

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