Rhapsody in yellow
Mar, 2016Views
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Contest Finalist in Art in Nature Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in People In Places Photo Contest
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SnowJ746
April 19, 2017
This image gives a feeling unlike anything else. You have captured true beauty, the essence of beauty. Teuly amazing. Great eye, im grateful you have this gift. Amazing work of art this image is. I would love it framed on my wall
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
I foresaw this image one day, a couple of weeks before easter, going through the Italian country for work. I traveled through endless buttercups (ranunculi) fields thinking to myself, how great would it be to see an orchestra playing in there?! It hasn't been easy to plan, because I wanted to shoot this with two friends with whom I like to shoot together with, and one at the time was in London. The cello was rented some 30 miles away, in Bologna, because no one around had one for rent and of course the buttercups wouldn't last forever so we had to do everything as soon as possible. Luckily we had a model readily available, but no make up artist or stylist for the dress. We had to do everything by ourselves and in a very short time frame, from buying two hats to learning how to apply makeup on the field (Italy is a sunny place, you need to refresh makeup several times when it's hot).Time
We wanted the most light possible, to capture the cheerful, luminous mood typical of the Italian spring so we set up the shooting for mid afternoon. We had to bring lots of extra light and reflectors because shadows were pretty hard of course and we needed to lose some on the model's face.Lighting
We had no less than four powerful LED lights (YongNuo yn-600) and a bright reflector just to keep the shadows on the model in check. We wanted the yellow reflections from the buttercups to set the temperature of the light. Everything was.. SO YELLOW! :DEquipment
We had an interesting setup. My friends both had a Nikon D750 with zoom lenses, but for this picture I actually used a film camera -- the Nikon F100 with the 50mm f1.4 G lens, which is great for this kind of shots. I used Portra 160 film, which has beautiful colors and great dynamic range. A Manfrotto tripod and nondescript light stands were used. An Exus circular polarizer completed the setup (I never shoot without when I'm outside).Inspiration
Well this particular shot has had a few influences. First of all, true to the country we shot this in, I imagined a Fellinian setup, with an orchestra playing on a bed of flowers. As for the light and colorful impact, my main reference has been the work of Japanese photographer Risaku Suzuki (1963-).Editing
Well most of my post processing was done.. Analogically. I develop myself the film I use (both color and bw) and, for occasions like this, I built a tank with very small holes in it where light enters and slightly changes the color of the picture to make it look less patinated. If you look closely, in this image you can see some magenta cast on the right. Digital post processing was of course applied, to make the picture in line with the image I had in mind. Since this is a scanned film photo, some smart sharpening has been applied to enhance sharpness without effecting grain (frequency separation + selective editing with a Wacom tablet before applying the mask with an overlay setting, or whatever it's called in English :))In my camera bag
When I'm not out for a shooting, I always bring one camera, one lens and one ttl flash with me, plus some tools of the trade like a circular polarizer and a Black Foamie Thing + hair bands (of Neil Van Niekerk fame). If I'm out for a shooting well.. things change. A lot. Suffice to say I need a car to get me close to the place of the shooting. The world is my studio. :D A non conspicuous bag is essential in both cases and so are business cards and a few printed photos in case someone questions my doing.Feedback
You need to plan ahead for a shot like this. It's not a given that you can fetch a cello, pronto, or that you can actually use the best fields. One problem we had is that, notwithstanding the fact that all around us there were only buttercups, only a couple of places were actually usable for the shooting. A few had terrible sign posts / huge landmarks right in the middle of the scene, a few others we couldn't get permission to shoot in. I spent one afternoon simply selecting the two best fields.. And they were miles apart. Oh and of course.. Be creative and imaginative!
