20.

Research shoot 4 – The confidence crisis and Ah…shit….

 

Crew

Nikky Hill – lighting

Nicole Hudson – Props, set and lighting

Jackie Yeats – lights, stand-in and images

 

This confidence crisis image was quite straight forward, it consisted of two layers but I wanted to shoot on a black background and use two inexperienced models

 

Trying something different with the background – I had decided as this image was one of my night life inspired images I would shoot it on a black back ground instead. I found it hard at first to get the back ground to look evenly black. When shooting on a white background (from what I have learn from doing these test shoots)  I would normally light the back ground to F8 if I wanted it even with some texture and at F11 if I wanted a properly blank whited out background. With a back ground I found straight away I was going to need to use a lot lower light power as at F11 or F8 you could see circles of lights hitting the back ground and the slight creases and bends in the paper. I lowered the light to F5.6 which seemed to give a more even background.

 

Finding the models – I was going to do the same thing as I did when finding my model for the change of hearts image and put out an advert on net-models and see who got in touch with me but on a night out I met Amber and Becky and after chatting to them for a bit I had a brain wave, i asked them if they would be interested in being in one of my pictures. I knew that they both had the look I was thinking of and they both dressed well so I decided it was worth a try. Luckily they both agreed and came down to the studio to do the shoot. None of them had done anything like this before and I could tell they where quite nervous to start with.

 

 

Layer one – was just of me standing alone I wanted myself looking very disheartened, like I had given up on meeting someone and that I wasn’t enjoying myself on this fictional night out. with a pint in hand to show the negative effect drinking can have on your mood

 

 

Layer two – I wanted it to look like I was pulling Amber towards me and a jerky movement so she maybe looked a bit blurred I also had this idea of her spilling a bit of her drink. But it didn’t really work, the images just looked awkward and staged I wanted more drama and over emphasis of body position but I couldn’t quite get Amber to look comfortable doing it, so I went for a more intense and intermit looking image as if the two of us had just met and where experiencing that first glance of eye contact. I directed  Becky to look around the side of amber I wanted her to look interested in the disheartened version of me in the final image, in order show this idea of going after the wrong person and also not needing to be so forward and arrogant on night out to attract girls. After a few goes she seemed to get what I was telling her and I got some really nice shot. I also managed with the aid of Jackie as my stand-in to get her looking in exactly the right place.

 

Editing

 

Ah….Shit…

 

This image was one of my more shocking images and I really did want it to be as in your faces as possible. The more blood and gore the better. I also went back to shooting on a white back ground, shooting it at F8 as I knew I wanted to halo my sprit self in Photoshop and F11 would have been to bright to seen a noticeable colour difference.

 

Spirit of me – I started but placing one of the studio lights right next to myself, shining the light directly onto my face and side of body. I wanted to look really very brighten and slightly over expose as I thought by doing this it would enhance this spirit or ghost like look. As I thought more about the image before the shoot I changed my mind from the drawing. i wanted myself to look like I was being lifted up a taken away, rather than just standing over my corps. I thought this sort of Jesus pose looked more dramatic and symbolic of death. I tried it many ways but I found the most effective way of effectively achieving this up lifted look was to get Jackie to take a picture of me falling forwards this way my chest was up and out and my legs where straight it really did look as if I was being lifted up from above. My facial expression needed to be one of disbelief and shock at what I had just done.

 

Dead me – I wanted as much blood as possible, I tried to keep in mind what I had seen on the day the guy had jumped. I vividly remember how the blood ran down the street and I wanted to recreate that and also the pooling where his head had impacted the pavement. One of the worse things I remember and that sticks in my mind about that day was that the guys eyes where still open and he just had this blank wide eyed stair, it is one of the most poignant things I remember about that day and it has stuck in my mind.

 

Editing

 

Halo effect – one of the first things I wanted to find out how to do was create a halo around the spirit layer of me to make it look more ghost like in a way. I found a number of videos on Youtube that explained various ways of doing it, but in the end I when for quite a simple halo technique that I think works well. I may play around with it a bit more and add some streaks of light coming off the halo to build on the effect.

 

Spirit look – after placing myself on top of the image and spent along time trying to create the opaque but vibrant looking spirit version of me. I didn’t want it to look dull and flat so I really used some heavy, colour level contrasting so even though I look see through in places the detail in other is still bold and not lost

 

Effect -  I also had to change the parameter of my effect, I couldn’t get it to work at all with my spirit look and I’m finding that if I shoot an image at a distance the effect doesn’t work as well. I find it works best on lager up close images. This is something I may need to experiment with in the studio.