Photographer Spends Three Months Building His Own Sets by Hand for Cinematic Photo Series

We’ve all been there — forking out for a personal project to make what you envisioned for your images a reality. But fine art photographer Nicky Hamilton takes that one step further — he spent months building these incredible sets for his photos.

Nicky Hamilton, a self-taught photographer, has just wrapped a photo series he titled "The Lonely Man," based on the emotions of his own childhood. Featuring various scenes from around a house, the process of sketching, building, lighting, and shooting each set took roughly three months.

Detailing his inspiration behind the photo series, Hamilton said:

In the early years my Dad started out as a builder [...] In the mid 80s he lost his business in a freak incident and had to declare himself bankrupt, post a recent purchase of a dream home he could no longer afford. He turned to crime and crime turned him into a drug addict who would one day call his son and ask me to prevent him from committing suicide.

Citing his belief that the photographic world “moves too fast,” Hamilton says he wanted to create his images in a way that slows down the modern photographic process. He wanted to work akin to a painter, treating a photo set as a canvas, which he could craft himself rather than finding on location.

Once armed with a concept, Hamilton sketches the scene before turning it into a 3D pre-visual (complete with pre-lights and colour palette tests). Next comes the building, dressing, and styling of the sets.

He lights the photos using continuous lighting, and shoots with a medium format Hasselblad camera. All of the images in this set have also had a considerable amount of time spent on them in regards to retouching and grading, resulting in a rather cinematic aesthetic in the final results.

See more of Hamilton’s work through his website and Instagram. 

The rest of his series "The Lonely Man," as well as some behind-the-scenes images of how he created the sets, can be viewed in the gallery below. All images used with permission.

[via PetaPixel]