If you're a Brooklynite or someone who at least keeps up with the Caribbean dancehall and Reggae music scene, you no doubt know the name DJ Ron Don. For the last 25 years, Ron Don has been a staple in the music scene dj'in numerous parties across the globe and putting out probably THOUSANDS of "mix tape" cds and party mixes. So, having the opportunity to photograph him for some recent promotional materials meant having to capture Ron Don as the only way I could imagine - Capture him as...a Don!
The location was a lounge in Canarsie called Trendz. I had zero opportunity for pre location scouting and the only available images to give me a sense of the place were from their Facebook page which didn't give me too much. So, we hit Brooklyn on a cold NY Sunday and just figured we'd wing it as best we could. Had 2 hours in the place and had to work quick.
1 Profoto head via octa for key and a Profoto Ringflash for some fill.
The lounge wasn't too big of a space to work in but there was enough room for me to try and get the shot I needed. The walls were all white, stucco and had a few round mirrors hanging. For furniture, there was a bunch of faux leather red chairs and two seater love seats. The tables were painted black wooden boxes with some dark tile of some sort for tops.
That plain wall and all back there just didn't work.
What was I going to do with those empty walls? There were of course a bunch of large speakers sitting around. My first thought was to create a wall of speakers right behind one of the 2 seater chairs and sort of surround Ron with the speakers. Figured that would be great but as the speaker count wasn't what I thought, we couldn't get get it to look uniform enough for it to work. So, I scrapped that idea and instead, figured....."hmmm...perhaps I can make a wall of tile using the tops of those box tables!?" Okay, let's try that. Dave and the other dude from Trendz who was helping us out gathered every table there and arranged them as I wanted behind Ron. Wasn't as easy as we thought but we ended up with something that may in fact not be too bad.
Needed more tables to fill in those blank spots to the left and right there.
D. Mack on the metering. (still haven't figured out why he holds a meter that way!)
Got down to business and started shooting. Few adjustments here and there wth Ron and we were jamming.
And the image we decided to go with.
But really though, gotta be all about them socks!!
The Digital Don
And here's the natural light portrait shot I got before leaving.
Was a good day overall. Ended up getting pretty much exactly what I wanted to get. We did do some work on white seamless but I decided to scrap that stuff for now as the main shot nails it. Got out of there and hit my old neighborhood of Ft. Greene for some seriously needed food! Many thanks and shout outs to my assistant David Mack for the hard work and the bts shots. Had him moving mad furniture around in addition to the photo stuff.
