Damali Conceptuals011
May, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photograph was taken in a huge abandoned factory in Philadelphia, called the Budd Plant. This plant used to make parts for American cars for over a hundred years but when it became cheaper to make the parts overseas, the plant closed down almost overnight. Over 4,000 people lost their jobs.The building is so large and so full of history that I thought it would make the perfect backdrop to Claudette Monroe's curvaceous figure and the slight fetish feel of the shoot.Time
We shot this on a blazing hot summer day around 3 PM on a Saturday. Originally, we were supposed to shoot this around 9 A.M to capture the beautiful eastern light as it rose. However, it was raining terribly that morning and the sky was too overcast to shoot Claudette in a glamorous style. I was about to call the entire shoot off, when this last large cloud formation passed by the sun and the sky was absolutely magnificent. So I called Claudette and I asked her to hurry down to the shoot location. Claudette was such a great sport considering that she lives far away and she had a wedding to attend that evening in New Jersey. So we started shooting around 3 PM and we wrapped up around 4:30 PM.Lighting
I really wanted to capture that "Playboy Magazine" style of natural light glamorous photography. I always admired how Arnie Freytag would use natural light and make it seem so bright, so soft, and so effortless, that it looked perfectly natural, even when you knew it couldn't be. Because of the time constraints, I didn't have time to get my team together, set up the generators, the lighting schemes, and reflectors. So I chose to make sure that Claudette was posed in front of huge swaths of natural light in the background, and I knew I should try to overpower the sun and blend them together in post. I chose to use an old Nikon SB-600 speed-light camera mounted, with a very cheap 12 inch soft box attached to the speed-light. I knew the set-up looked ridiculous but I also knew that I didn't want to use too much light that could possibly take out some of the natural light in the background. The result was a very soft and natural looking light that barely effected the natural lighting behind Claudette.Equipment
This was one of the most crudest and cheapest equipment set-ups of all time for a glamour photography shoot. I'm a firm believer that the equipment is not what makes a really good photograph, the photographer is. So I was a bit nervous at first, but I realized from past experiences, that some of my favorite shots were when I used less equipment. I used my Nikon D300s Camera with my Nikkor 50mm 1.8 lens. I decided to pair this camera set-up with a Nikon SB-600 speed light attached to the camera. I used a Neewer 12inch on camera soft box that I purchased for maybe $15 from Amazon to diffuse the light from the front. That was everything. Four pieces of equipment. A camera, a 50 mm lens, a flash, and a means to diffuse the flash.Inspiration
I am a huge fan of juxtaposition. This abandoned factory, the Budd Plant, once represented everything that made this nation so great for so many years. The Budd plant had been built in 1912 over 70 acres of land in the North Philadelphia section of the city. Philadelphians would go to school, graduate, and get a shift or two at the Budd Plant, buy a house, has some kids, and repeat. Now it's just a huge 70 acre monolithic urban blight representing poverty in the name of "change" and "profits". The Blonde Bombshell Claudette Monroe is the absolute opposite of all of this. Claudette is curvaceous, classy, refined,well traveled and loves high end "toys". Claudette represents everything a man of wealth and prestige would want in a woman. People like Claudette ( not Claudetter herself she is just a metaphor) drive past this building everyday, on their way to their high powered downtown careers and back to their well appointed homes. They never really see this poverty laced urban blight. Which is why I wanted Claudette blindfolded. So for me, this image is a very powerful representation of juxtaposition between the poor and the wealthy.Editing
The best part about using natural light is the significantly decreased requirement of heavy post processing. However, because this image is supposed to be like a "playboy" glamour shoot, I understood that the skin has to be deliberately ultra soft. So I ran two or three of my favorite "Actions" in Photoshop to achieve a nice base look. I then used a customized setting filter I have in my NIK Color EFX Pro-4 to enhance the colors and give them a stronger contrast and cleaner tone.I tweaked the levels and used Frequency Separation techniques in Photoshop to process her skin. and NIK Viveza 2 for a little over-all polish to the finished product.In my camera bag
Normally I carry my Nikon D300, my Nikkor 50 mm, 30-70 mm, and my 70-300 mm lens's with me. I typically keep my trusted SB-600 flash, my Neewer on camera 12 inch soft box, and my batteries. Typically, if I shoot outdoors, I rarely need anything more than this anymore.Feedback
Remember that the first part of photography, is "photo" which means light. Remember that to our eyes, nothing is more perfect than the natural light of the sun.So when you shoot an image like this outdoors, don't compete with the sun, compliment the sun. Try your best to blend the lights together so that it creates an amalgamation of light and not a narrative of lights. I used a simple 12 inch Neewer soft box to illuminate Claudette so that she was the focus and the lights were not. The other thing to take into consideration is depth of field. This image is almost one city block long from door to door, but it doesn't seem like that. It gives the eyes something to focus on other than just her smoldering sensuality. I would also recommend attempting some sort of juxtaposition composition wise. Because an image is supposed to tell a story and I find that if you deliberately search for juxtaposition it immediately tells a story. Even if a lot of people do not understand your story. I think a photo like this is appreciated just for trying to tell a story.
