kelly
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02/12/08 12:09 pm pst
this set has an interesting story. first though ill tell you a bit about how it was shot. depending on which photo you look at, you may have a hard time telling exactly what the background is. its from that same group of flats i picked up from GG before i started shooting for them. its 2 flats side by side which are 4 feet by 8 feet tall, and one flat behind her against the wall. one of the main reasons i do such extreme lighting is because i dont want it to be noticeable, at least at first, that shes just standing next to a couple of flats. so its almost like an illusion, i created something behind her the distracts as well blends the seems between each flat, ... which is that white light behind her. i like fantasy ... so this was my way of wrapping her in pink hoping no one would ask themselves where the hell she would be that a wall is touching either side of her. the fake hallway is only about 2 feet wide and a little more than 4 feet deep on one side. i pulled one flat forward and hid a light behind it pointed at the back wall. my philsophy to lighting a scene is to create something as surreal as possible by using lights "improperly". i put that in quotes because there really is no such thing as improper light placement, although people talk about it all the time. the real improper placement is the position of the model in relation to the light. now im starting to geek out. so for this i used a light behind her that was far too strong which allowed the light to wrap itself around her, creating a glow of pink on the outter line of her skin and hair. this is a trick because if you use this technique in a small place, and you use enough light, it will bounce off all the walls and create really well rounded lighting. for instance, in some shots youll see her hair is reflecting light, which wouldnt ordinarily be possible without light coming from up top. but the light is technically coming from up top because its so strong that its bouncing off the ceiling. anyhow, enough techy stuff. actually speaking of techy. i only get techy when i talk about lighting. the functions of my camera are a mystery to me. i really only care about light. i purposefully and sometimes not purposefully make mistakes, tweak them, polish them, and that becomes my style. if you do things by thebook you end up looking like everyone else. so the light behind her being so strong is probably technically "wrong". but ive made it work in this situation for the above reasons. ok ... so beyond the geek out stuff. this was my first shoot with catra i believe. we had alreadygotten about 4 out of 8 sets shots for the night and we were going to take a break after this one. i normally dont do pink. i prefer bolder colors. but, as some of you may know, ive been dating an incredible woman that is probably the girliest girl ive ever dated. she walks around my home naked in nothing but a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. she has a pink bathrobe. these things, whether you like it or not, will find their way into your subconscious, and if youre an artist of some sort, they will eventually find their way to your work. that even goes for non artists, we're all connected and we're all influenced by one another. the fun part about photography is that you get to see this physical representation of that for your own eyes. so, yeah ... pink. im starting to dig it. and youll be seeing more of it as my gf actually painted one of the new sets that im shooting right now for GG. anyhow, the day of the shoot i had received in the mail, a brand new strobe light. i bought this one so i could do more work outdoors. its about 4 times as powerful which means it gives off 4 times the amount of light, so hypothetically i could paint the whole wall of a building with this light. that was its intended use. but as i always do, i push the limits to see how i can use this in every scenario. so the first time using this light is in the shot. for those of you who dont know, the strobes i use can be controlled by basically a dial that you turn that coincides with the level of output for the light. so, being the kid that i am, i wanted to see what this thing could do .. and in true spinal tap fashion, i cranked it to number 11. so we started shooting. and we were shooting and shooting ... i actually shoot really fast so maybe around the 30th acquisition i started to feel a little dizzy. i dont know how to describe it but i just felt a little off. nothing huge, just off. and i believe catra felt the same way at this point. so we finish and we go inside my house to take a break before the next set. by gf, whos very nurturing, had made us some garlic pasta for a snack as i hadnt eaten in awhile. so we sat down to eat and we both started becoming seriously ill. its really hard to describe the feeling but i was a little nauseous, and dizzy, and it just felt like echoing waves of bad inside my body. and catra was right there with me in this feeling. i had an insta headache by this point and we ended up having to take probably an hour break before i was capable of shooting again. and as we started feeling better we tried to figure out exactly what went wrong. the debate was whether the pasta bad us sick or if it was the super bright light. im actually 99.9999 sure it was the lights but whats really weird is that ive used the light in the same situation, the same way and not had that effect. furthermore, ive also had the same pasta dish a couple nights previous and several nights after with no problems either. so who knows exactly. but im pretty sure the light disoriented us so much that it threw off our equilibrium. so yeah ... sometimes shootings a blast and sometimes it makes ya a little sick. all for the sake of art! :)
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