Photographer: Thad Allender

Camera: Nikon D1H

Lawrence filmmakers, from left, Chris Ordal, Patrick Rea, Mark von Schlemmer, Jeremy Osbern and Chris Blunk, will screen their films during The Hometown Film Festival Wednesday at The Granada.

Lens: 17mm

ISO: 200

Aperture: 4.5

Shutter: 1/320

The photo assignment was simple: Shoot a portrait of five Lawrence filmmakers at Kansas University’s Old Father Studios.

Like most assignments, I went into this one relatively “blind” and without a concrete idea for the portrait. I arrived at the studio 45 minutes early with the hope that I could dream something up. I quickly started snooping around in the props room. I hatched the idea to incorporate TV sets into the photo, which would help represent the cinematic/film theme. My next hurdle was to “sell” the filmmakers on the idea that their faces would be splashed across the TV screens. They dug it, so we started shooting.

With three lights set up to properly light the scene, I arranged the five filmmakers so that there would be a foreground, a middle-ground and a background to help guide the viewer’s eye through the photograph. We wrapped up the shoot by shooting mugshots, which were pasted into the TV sets using a computer.