The Light Thief II

Carrying on from my last entry - I'd decided to mask my identity in my conceptual picture with light. It made perfect sense, I'm so into my lighting, and it dawned on me that if I do some more with this character, the light and his adventure with it is what it's all about. After all, that's what this blog has been.  I thought I'd started without a firm theme for this shot, but I'm starting to think that there was actually a well-formed plan sitting in my subconscious all along, waiting for me to peel away at my thoughts by just acting until it emerged.

Back to the execution. The idea was to overexpose my face with a cleverly placed flash.  But where?  That part was easy, inside the prop I'd intended to use, a much-loved old briefcase.



Then it was just a matter of trying out various poses.




As the winter afternoon wore on, I had to be mindful to keep my ambient exposure right, so I crept the shutter speed down a stop or two by the time I had finished. Condensation from my breath also started showing up in the flash. I would have liked to have played with it some more, but since I really couldn't see it, it was impossible to work with. I'd originally thought about a smoke machine or bomb inside the bunker for extra effect, but was happy enough with the flare I'd got in the earlier exposures.  Posing done, it was time to go home, pick the shots I liked and work a little Photoshop magic.



And there he is, the light thief. I think he must have found a place where that amazing energy is abundant, and came back here with a bag full of it.

This feels like the start of a story, a journey. The more I look at him, the more I wonder what he'll get up to next. Is the light safe? Is it a force for good or bad?  I don't know yet, but I'm sure my subconscious does, and gradually, it's going to let me know. I can't wait to see where it takes me.

The Light Thief

Ever feel the need to stretch  yourself creatively?  I've had that bug for a while now, feeling far too comfortable in my skill set, doing mostly pictorial work, even for fun. So I decided it was time I got of my arse and did something a little more conceptual. I'll admit what helped was seeing a Creative Live webinar presented by fine art photographer Brooke Shaden.

I've had a bunch of ideas floating around in my head waiting for me to do something with them, and watching Brooke at work made me just mash them together, shake them up and see what fell out. Not exactly the theme-driven approach Brooke uses, but when I realised it could actually make an interesting picture, I couldn't wait to execute it. 

The first element I wanted to use was my location: This bunker-like concrete structure in Leith Valley. I've lit the interior before, and it seemed to me like a portal to someplace elemental, like the lift from Hell.

See what I mean?

The next step was to add some more light for the effect I wanted to create, like the thing really was a portal to another dimension. The idea was that I could layer these in photoshop later for just the right effect.

Next came a character and a model to portray them.  This was a spur of the moment project so...

...I got into costume.  Thank goodness that's the old suit I use for gigging with my band. I got covered in mud by the time I was done. Just taking a test pop with my wireless remote in hand here.

Like Brooke Shaden, I wanted my character to be anonymous. Brooke often uses uses hair to mask her character faces - originally because like me, she didn't use models other than herself for a while. As you can see, I'm not your Fabio flowing locks type, although I'll admit that in the 90's, I had a ponytail for about 15 seconds.

I was really challenged as to how to hide my face with something that wouldn't hijack the picture.  I thought about using foreground foliage, but that didn't seem right.  Sunglasses?  Too Blues Brothers. I'd already struck out, looking for an appropriate brimmed hat in the Op shops around town. Mask? Too Zorro. Blindfold? Too loaded.

Then I struck on it. One of the elements floating around in my head would do, something central to a lot of my work. It would really transform my shot into something intriguing, a story.  It was so...me.

I would make myself anonymous with light.

More in due course.

Brand New Website

Thanks to some fine work from James Hacon of Destination Content and Ian Simpson of The Logic Studio, I'm pleased to announce that my new website is up and open for business!

Clive Copeman Photography.

Do visit me there. I welcome your comments and feedback.

Interpreting Reality

With photography, I don't ever claim to capture reality. Instead I interpret it. I'm presenting to you what I see in the scene before me - and sometimes, what I want to see. The degree of manipulation that goes into making photographs has been the subject of debate ever since its origins. I'm on the side that says the minute you decide where to point your camera, you've started editing the wide reality before you.

So here's an example from the other night when I went out to shoot the aurora.  I drove up to a dark, south-facing spot on the Otago Peninsula and as soon as I turned my truck lights off, this is pretty much what I saw:



Darkness. Not the most impressive aurora, just a barely discernible green glow above the cloud on the horizon but I knew my camera would reveal more with a longer exposure. Here's a stitched panoramic shot of the scene with the aperture wide and about a 30 second exposure:



There was a very red moon out that night, providing just enough detail on the ground to give a little foreground interest and depth to the picture. But I'm not happy with it. In my head, the sky was much more blue, there was more ground detail and contrast. So I wanted to apply a bunch of global adjustments in Lightroom: Saturation and vibrance, sauturation in the blues and aquas, clarity and lighter shadows.

Then I added a few local adjustments on the ground: mainly more clarity and contrast - until I arrived at something more like the picture I had in my head:



Not reality, but my interpretation of it.

Last week, interpreting the scene really helped dig me out of an embarrassing hole. I did a quick commercial shoot in a business. All was well back in the office until I realised in my key shot, I'd positioned myself where an unfortunate piece of foreground material appeared prominently in the crotch of one of my subjects. I won't show you the picture. I'll just say Photoshop's content aware fill and some painstaking cloning came to the rescue. The client thought the pictures were great.

I don't mind admitting I'm not perfect. But I try to make my pictures a perfect representation of what's in my head.

Over delivering

I like to over deliver where I can.  That's not just to make my customers happy. It's also to make sure their needs are truly met. Often I'll be hired by someone who isn't the real end user for pictures, so I try to think of what a layout editor or web designer might need from a set of photos and deliver them with the options they might need.

Last week I had a chance to get out from my desk at Destination Content and do a little stills shoot for a new commercial client. The job involved getting some shots at one of their customers, a local joinery business. The job was really just to get one shot that depicted the business, so a hero shot of one of the employees in action seemed to be in order and my client agreed. Since this was to be the first of a series of shoots, I wanted to make sure I was on the right path and invited her onto location.



I picked a well-lit part of the workshop to create the shot, but thought the background needed a little lift.



So I hid a couple of flashes to push a little light onto the back wall and up into the roof. Then I got Michael to get to work sanding the window frame, hitting him with a little key light from the left. I like how the frame reaches out to us, adding a little depth to the shot. My client seemed pretty pleased with what I was doing and headed back to headquarters, but I wasn't done.




After the action shots were sorted, I thought I'd mooch around a little to see what caught my eye. It didn't take long to find three things I thought were needed to really tell the story of the joinery business: some raw materials, some tools, and some finished products. So I went to it. The ambient light was perfectly adequate for this part of the job.

                

The planes above were shot with the Canon 24mm 1.4 EF II lens and it's my favourite piece of glass at the moment. Sharp, great colour and great shallow depth of field effects. I recently shot some video on it in the evening and it made the most beautiful bokeh out of the city lights. I might write a little more on that lens later.

I made sure I had some landscape and portrait options to deliver, as well as some with gutter and text space, just so my client had everything a designer might ask for. Now I'm greatly looking forward to the next assignment.

Under Construction

Much as I love painstaking preparation and setup for shots, most of the time, there just isn't that luxury. You have to previsualise and construct your shot quickly.

Yesterday I went out to do a quick portrait of Justin Macready for Placemakers' Under Construction Magazine. Justin's a busy owner-operator so we didn't have long. He'd already spent some time trying to set up our shot on a building site with some timber framing for the background. Unfortunately that fell through, so it was out to the timber yard for the job.

It was a blazing hot day and 1.00. There wasn't much open shade with a nice background, so I quickly settled on this pile of timber and planned to have Justin with his back to the sun.  First shot to gauge the exposure:


Shooting towards the sun, I'd get some good highlights on Justin's head and shoulders, but I'd need to fill the shadows in his face.  I dialed down the exposure a bit and popped my tripod bag into position with a bare flash on a lightstand just on my left, the flash set to half power.  Bang. In the zone straight away. Time to get Justin out of his office and do this thing.








I was more happy enough with bare bulb rather than softening the shadows with an umbrella, it's just a more blokey look and just as importantly, it was fast. One shot, and I was done - but I did get a looser one, just for safety. It's a cover shot, so there's going to be text down the left hand side. Never hurts to give your photo editor or graphic artist some options, even when the brief is tight.

Let The Good Times Roll

OK, Completely off topic here, but this is me and my good friends in Bluestone, kicking off the New Year just the way we like. Like photography, I came to music late in life. I never played an instrument or sang in a band until my late 20's. Seeing me nowadays, some would say my record is still clean. Happy 2013 everyone, may it bring you good things.