Just like writing a good story, in photography, the setting is a character that shares equal weight with your main subject. It’s the relationship between those two elements that sells and tells the story. This is why at Cooper & O’Hara we start the planning of every shoot with a question: what is the setting going to be, and how does it tell the story?
While Photoshop gives photographers the satisfaction of creating whatever setting and story we think of, and can create using digital art or compositing, it can also feel hollow and false. Say what you will about photoshop wizardry, but it's really hard and takes a lot of time and skill to create depth and connectedness between the post-processed elements of a photo and the shots done in-camera. Furthermore, there's a huge benefit in using these situations to create an air of magic and excitement on set, and the on-set experience matters a lot to be memorable and stand-out from the crowd.
My business partner, Thomas, and I take a lot of inspiration from movies and television. The film industry realizes that there is a time and a place for both CGI and practical effects. For this shoot we took a page out of the old-school movie-magic book and decided to use smoke, color, and lighting to create a unique background that told the story, just plain looked cool, and grabbed the attention of magazine readers. It was also a lot of fun to work with our hands to create something clever that the art director, make-up artist, and subject could see and experience on set. It’s still incredibly memorable and brought up often by the people of the magazine. Consider this the next time you’re working on a conceptual photo. How can I create this in the real world?
These Portraits in "space" were made using practical effects on-set.
Below: some additional shots done in other parts of the Alberta Aviation Museum to add variety to the article.
Below: what the shots look like without any smoke added.
Here’s the detailing of the creative brief, followed by the idea and then technical details.
Shawna Pandya is a badass scientist & doctor in Edmonton, Alberta, that we photographed for Avenue Magazine, a city, life, and style monthly magazine. The main focus of the story is her participation in the Project PoSSUM (sweet code name!) a scientist-astronaut spaceflight qualification program aimed at studying clouds in the upper atmosphere to understand more about global climate and climate change. So: astronauts and SPACE!
Only problem is we don’t have access to anything space related, and even if we did, all those things are kind of hokey and been done to death. So, we collaborated with the art director to brainstorm some possibilities. Light shone through holes punched in a roll of seamless came up, but we knew that unless we shot at a very small aperture, roughly f16 or higher, the holes would just look like polka dots. But if there was something in the air to catch the light, maybe we could make streams of light like some sort of hyperspace effect. This was the idea that caught us on to bringing out our old hazer fog machine for some experiments and test shots.
After more time mulling things over, the concept of space dust and nebulous clouds took over as a strong visual. We knew that in the right moment these clouds of heavy fog, made using professional fog juice, could look enough like swirls of forming galaxies. In this situation it would actually be interesting to pull back further and see the rest of the set to make an interesting meta photo that showed the effect in real-life. Pulling back the curtain to show the ingenuity to the viewers, dare they say it was just photoshopped.
It took some teamwork to get the smoke in the spots we wanted, but not in front of the subject, and get the timing right, but in the end it was worth it to get it looking epic and surreal in-camera. You’d be amazed what a $50 smoke machine and a roll of paper can accomplish.
One of the BTS posted by the Magazine's Art Director:
A photo posted by Pete Nguyen (@pete.nguyen) on Feb 27, 2016 at 12:12pm PST
GEAR LIST & LIGHTING
Shot on Canon 5D Mark III w/ Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art Series lens
Camera Left Light - Lumopro Speedlight with orange Gel
Camera Right Light - Alienbee 800 with Paul C. Buff Beauty Dish white
BG Light: AlienBee 800 located behind paper, bounced off of reflective wall and through the holes in the seamless.
Fog Machine - 400w Cheap Fogger from Amazon + quality fog juice from local music store.
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The additional images shot near the planes were done with one light - A Photek Softlighter 60" on the Einstein. Supplemented with a large white reflector (5-in-1 6.5'x5' size). The horizontal shot was taken using the Sigma 35mm 1.4 Art Series lens.
I hope you try your hand at creating practical effects in your photography work. Challenge yourself to use that concept as a restraint, whether it be "smoke and mirrors movie magic," make-up effects, or something else entirely novel! And don't forget to share your images below in the comments.
This is the way I like photographing people. I like to get as much in camera and with a bit of creativity, make unique effects and looks during the session. Great images and great subject in Shawna Pandya.
Thanks, Donna. Shawna was great! I'm glad to hear you related to this philosophy and hope it inspired you to continue to push that creativity
It's always worth the effort to nail things in camera. Excellent results and great article.
Thanks, Derek. Much appreciated, I'm glad you agree as well!