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Apr, 2015Views
1974
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Awards
Honorable Mention in Two Of The Same Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Halloween Photo Contest 2018
Contest Finalist in Creative Reality Photo Contest
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was shot in my old living room. Some mild clutter cleaning took place, but equally some purposefully left in... I wanted it to be a real room without it being over engineered.Time
Mostly likely about 2 in the afternoon, but being in doors and all it wasn't the end of the world, but i did use some natural light from patio windows as fill.Lighting
The whole shoot was largely based on being or feeling semi candid with a lot of ambient light. When adding a weird juxtaposition, I quite like shooting in raw lighting shall we say? Lighting is a tool to help narrative, if you want an edgy weird styled shoot, then don't polish it with perfect lighting, allow noise to creep in, push the camera hard... have fun! I did use off camera fill flash through out the shoot mainly to get a control of contrasts but the beauty of the masks meant i had few considerations to lighting patterns on the face. I also fully intended on relying on photoshop which is something I try to avoid normally, but I knew from the start I wanted to cross process the photos. This shot however bucked that trend a little given it's so deep in the room and had two models varying distances from the window to consider, so it was lit with a medium softbox and speedlite above the camera, a speedlite in the lamp and fill from patio windows camera left which also helped add a few large reflections on skin etc.Equipment
Canon 5d mk 3, 24-70L and two speedlites (Canon and Yongnou with Yongnou transceivers) as described above. You can actually see the transceiver block shadow in the lamp but as said, it was designed not to be perfect. I love quirky photographers like David Lachapelle who leaves stand in shots etc, and with this concept it wasn't the end of the world... plus you work with what you have.Inspiration
I wanted to use masks and I had visions of two models wearing contrasting lingerie sets carrying out every day things like reading the paper, hanging out laundry, eating breakfast and just dismissing being obsessed with lighting and having fun with it instead. The mannequin head was left in because she's my test subject for judging lighting patterns or contrast pre-model arrival andit just so happened to be a prop in the room that we thought would be funny.. leaving her head in shot when the models are implied animals, if you can call a mythical creature an animal. Things like leaving the throws on the chairs to have busy patterned contrast to kick off bare skin were all considered. I think when shooting weird you still have to consider your surrounding and the technical aspects, but as long as you have done, when you release it out in to the wild it'll become completely subjective.. someone will always shoot it differently and have an opinion about what is distracting... and that's good, because a perfect photo is a boring photo as the saying goes. As long as you know that you considered them and dismissed it rather than it being complacency, that's all that matters so you can choose to improve with your style and vibe.Editing
Maybe opened up a few shadows given the lighting constraints and added a textured layer of the top.In my camera bag
2 canon bodies, 2 flashguns, fast 24-70 and 70-200 lenses and a couple of smaller flash mods like a rouge flashbender and Gary Fong lightsphere. Otherwise it's a pack what you need jobby preshoot, but i'm a fan of cheap and easy speedlite solutions as i do eventing work and do normally like playing with lighting when doing portraits.Feedback
This is all about having fun, my only concern here were the models being comfortable, the weird narrative and contrast in the image. Enjoy it. Simply the more you learn in photography, the more you consider and look out for. It's impossible for me to give advice in that respect as you may look at the scene differently with different available equipment, but essentially unless it's a huge bespoke set up, photography is problem solving to ensure your vision can be recognised.
