[FStoppers Original] BTS Video With Surreal Portrait Photographer Rob Woodcox

I’ve always been amazed by artists who have the ability to take a vision of something that doesn’t actually exist, and then produce a surreal image of it in fine detail. One such artist is photographer Rob Woodcox, and this past winter I got the chance to capture some behind the scenes footage of a shoot he was working on, and also interview him about the project and his production processes. In the video, you’ll see the final image, and hear Rob provide some insight on the post-processing of his photos. Hit the jump for some more samples of his work!

The final image for “Calling Outer Space”, complete with a description of the shot, can be viewed here.

From the first five minutes at Rob’s photo shoot, I could see why Rob liked shooting with kids so much– it’s because he is still very much one. Now don’t get me wrong, he takes his work seriously, but his demeanor and the attitude with which he carries himself on set and off set, was always polite with a pinch of silly. While trying to manage his assistants who were holding light sources and fog machines, Rob had to continually interact with the kids in order to keep them focused and happy. Not to mention that it was about 30 degrees out, and the sun was quickly setting, Rob always had a smile on his face.

A few days later I followed up with Rob to do his video interview. In speaking with him, one of the things that stood out to me about his process, but ended up on the cutting room floor, was the fact that he keeps a dream journal and fills it with all of his fantastical ideas. It’s easy to these see dream-like concepts in a lot of his work. There is definitely a lot going on in photoshop, as anyone can clearly see, so I told Rob that I might need to do another video in the future where he shares specific methods on how he pieces these together.

If you want to connect with Rob, check out his facebook and flickr pages. Leave a comment below if you dug this BTS video, I might do some more interviews in the future for FS so feel free to let me know what you’d like to see.