4 replies to this topic

[dcbear78]

I am doing ongoing TFP shoots with a local model, Maddie who you may remember from this thread. We were scheduling our next shoot together and realised it was going to be on Friday the 13th so thought we may use a supernatural theme. Her mum/manager was very concerned about her looking too goth/scary/horror so I suggested we could try a Dracula's Bride theme. Young, beautiful yet tragic vampire. We found an amazing make up artist who agreed to help us out. Unfortunately I was not there when this was being done and the result is not as theatrical/vampy as I wanted and had discussed with all parties (again influence from the mum).

 

I had scouted a couple locations. First was this really cool section in our botanic gardens. Problem was they closed at 6pm and I couldn't shoot a vampire in the daylight. So I tried using the lighting technique to darken the background by putting heaps of light onto my subject to give the effect of darkness. Kind of fortunately the make up didn't work for this shot. As opposed to the vampire shot I intended, I got a kind of "Fairy Tale Princess" effect which I really liked....

 

Maddie by Crew One Photography, on Flickr

 

Maddie by Crew One Photography, on Flickr

 

Next up was another park (but public so no closure). I had a vision of shooting her on an old chair in front of some trees. By the time we got here it was fully dark so had a whole new raft of lighting problems to overcome. We also had some fake blood made up to give the effect of the vampire crying blood as I specifically wanted the vampire effect for this one.

 

Pretty happy with this...

 

Dracula's Bride by Crew One Photography, on Flickr

 

But this is the shot I had envisioned. I did not want happy, cheerful young girl that Maddie does so well. I wanted to push her into broadening her modeling experience and add some drama into the shot. I initially didn't like this one due to the arm. But in processing it occurred to me it works because of it. Because the limbs are kind of twisted and angular it helps convey the distress I wanted.

 

Dracula's Bride by Crew One Photography, on Flickr

 

 

I was exhausted by the end of this. So much effort for so few shots. But now I see the results I am pretty happy. I was very stressed going into this. This was only the 2nd time using my strobes and having to use very foreign techniques in both shots to achieve the look I wanted when I had zero experience doing this before. Not even a trial run at home. And it pretty much worked how I wanted it to. Not perfect, but good enough for me for a first time. I'm happy to explain the lighting if anyone is interested.

[iNYONi]

Great shots, yes could you give a breakdown of the lighting for the shots. I really like the first shot and agree the arm in the last shot kind of makes the shot.

Great set. Thanks for sharing.

[dcbear78]

The first two shots I used one of my strobes just off camera right with just a 55 degree reflector on it as I knew I was going to need lots of light on her. This was just a little to harsh so I had the shower cap type of thing that goes over a beauty dish to make it into a soft box and wrapped it around the end of the reflector a couple times. This softened it nicely while keeping the light just on her. The light was as high as I could get it (about 7 foot) and pointing down on her.

I metered thus light for a shot at f2, then played with setting until I was happy with the result.

Next problem was her dark hair was getting lost in the darkness of the background. So I set up a speed light behind and to the left to give me a rim light. Set this to about one third the power of the strobe.
The next two were shot in near full darkness as it took much longer to set up than I thought.

I used a strobe high camera left with a soft box as my main light, metered to f8. I used a second strobe behind and camera right with a beauty dish with shower cap thing on it as a rim light at about on third power (should've given it a bit more). And then to light up the trees in the background I have a speed light with a shoot through umbrella lined with red cellophane (I don't have jells) to give a hint of red light across the trees.

[dcbear78]

Here's an idea of the conditions the first ones were shot in. Gives an idea of how you can affect the perception of light.



From memory those two shots have not had their exposure adjusted. They are very close to as shot.

[chandra]

Nice shots !

i liked all. esp the last one looks excellent to me ..