As I was researching helmet Newton to determine his style I came across an image that really took my fancy. It is called “Self Portrait with Model and Wife” and was shot in Paris in 1981.

Sometime ago I acquired a very large mirror that came out of the shop that was being refurbished. I knew that it would be perfect to try to recreate the image. While one of the other photographers (Helen) was shooting Johana I was working out the angles that were needed.

Lighting was going to be the challenge. I needed to ensure that both myself and Johemiane were lit especially as we were in quite different locations.

I initially tried to use the single lit positioned camera on the right. However, the image below shows that this created a number of issues. The lighting was very uneven and I was getting unwanted flares.

In order to eliminate the flare I moved the constant light so that it was in line with Johemiane. Then I placed a 65cm octabox just out of view so that it provided better light on her.

While it fixed one issue it presented a further two. Firstly there was no light on Johemiane’s back or on Helen who was acting the part of the “wife”. Secondly I will getting an ugly shadow on the backdrop from the constant light.

The answer was to move the large light. This was positioned next to me aiming it to just touch Johemiane. This provided lighting for her back. It also had the advantage that the light reflecting off the mirror illuminated her front. The same light also lit Helen.

It took about 15 shots to get everything right in camera.

I selected the final image. Then, I took it into Photoshop. I used Silver Efex Pro to apply the same black and white treatment. This was the treatment I had used on all images from the shoot. Finally to replicate the image I flipped my one.

In the final image you can see the code connecting my camera to the computer. A similar cable can be seen in the original photo however its purpose would’ve been completely different. In Helmet’s case the cord would have been to fire the flashes.

As I mentioned in the first post of the series, this whole shoot was intended to produce images. These images could be considered for the Wellington income print competition.

This image ended up being the one selected by the club to represent them. It came third in the round.

This is the third post covering the shoot where we were trying to produce images in the style of Helmet Newton. You can look at the previous post for the background to the shoot.

After we completed the domestic nudes images I moved into our lounge where I had another set up already in place. This consisted of my Godox AD300 strobe in a 80cm softbox.  

As in the previous location there was no diffusion material on the softbox. This meant that the light was harder than you typically get. The settings on the camera did not change f5 1/100s ISO100.

This image was not directly inspired by one of Helmet’s actual photos however they use of the bunny mask is not exactly original.

I positioned Johemiane on the chair and gave her a couple of props to interact with. She was absolutely brilliant at getting into character and this showed in the resulting images. The video below gives you a behind-the-scenes view of this part of the shoot. 

The image came out exactly as I visualised it. As with the others it was coverted to a high contrast black-and-white image using a specific recipe I had created in Silver EffexPro.

In the next post we move to the most complicated shoot of the session. 

This is the second post covering the shoot where we were trying to produce images in the style of Helmet Newton. You can look at the previous post for the background to the shoot.

The first series of images were shot on a white seamless in what was obviously a studio. He had done another body of work entitled “Domestic Nudes” with subjects naked and more normal circumstances. In the second part of the show I wanted to recreate some of these. 

I had only booked an hour with Johemiane to complete different looks. I knew that I could not afford to waste time mucking around with lights. Fortunately, I have a lot of gear. I was able to set up lights ahead of time in the areas I had identified as places I wanted to shoot. As they all walked off the same trigger I only had to move Johemiane, myself and the camera. I also swapped cameras to my Nikon Z6ii.

We started in the kitchen which turned out to be a great location. I had set up my Godox V1 speedlight in a 65cm softbox. I found that the speedlight is more than adequate in such a situation. To keep the light punchy there was no diffusion material over the front of the softbox.

The only issue I was dealing with was the reflection of the softbox in our garden window. To get around this problem I moved the light to minimise the effect. 

We then moved into our entranceway and I had a Johemiane play the piano.

The setting for these images was f5 1/100s ISO100. This allowed some of the ambient light to enter the image. It prevented the photo from looking completely flashed up.

Each year the Camera club in the Wellington region have a print competition. The club that hosts sends out a list of 10 topics. Each club submits one print for each topic. Generally, the topics are fairly lame. However, in 2023, the Kapiti club decided to stir things up a little with the topic “In the style of Helmet Newton”.

For anyone unfamiliar Helmut Newton (born Helmut Neustädter; 31 October 1920 – 23 January 2004) was a German-Australian photographer. The New York Times described him as a “prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications.

I heard about the topic before its release. A member of the Kapiti Club asked whether I could help them source models. I know that recreating some of his work would be very fun and challenging. It was it was a challenge I was very happy to undertake.

As chance would have it, as I was thinking about setting a shoot up, I was approached by Johemiane (@Johemiane). She was a professional nude model from the Czech Republic who was travelling through New Zealand. She was approaching local photographers to earn a little bit of money to fund her travel. I spoke with a couple of photographers from my club. I wanted to see if they were interested in sharing the costs. We booked Joanna for a two hour shoot. The first hour would be shared in the second hour was totally devoted to my own concepts. Because the lighting and arrangement in each shoot is different I have split the two hour session into a series of posts.

The first task was the analyse Helmut’s images to try to determine what was his style. Given that he started photography in 1936 and was shooting right through into the 1990s this was not a simple exercise. However when you looked at his most famous word there were two things that sprung out. Firstly they all portrayed women in strong/dramatic poses. Secondly the lighting was very contrasty and it was clear that he had deployed hard light a lot. While he was mainly known for black & white images, you could see the same style in the colour ones. 

The first look I set out to recreate was an image entitled “They Come” shot in 1981. In his original image helmet had photographed four models in the latest Vogue fashions he then got them to repeat the same pose except they were fully nude.

The lighting in the image indicates that it is a single night coming from Camera left. They are short on a seamless white background. I see that exactly the same arrangement I initially positioned the light camera right. As this was part of the session with the other two photographers, I made things easier. I used a constant LED light that I had recently acquired. The idea was that they would not have to much about swapping out the trigger.

We started with Johemiane fully clothed. By using a constant light my settings where is f5.6 1/125s IS0800. The image below is an example example of what these settings produced. They were not exactly what I was looking for.

So I powered up an Elinchrom D400 and positioned it camera left. It was in a 7″ reflector which gave a very hard light. I left the constant light in place to provide fill.

I also determined that the black dress was not working so I had Johana change into a pink one.

It was there a matter of getting here to do a number of strong poses. As my usual practice I was shooting tether to the computer. Once the clothed shots were taken, we reviewed them in the computer, and chose the ones that we wanted to repeat nude.

The computer was positioned just out of shot but where Johemiane could see it. The other great feature with the Panasonic tether app is that you can select a previous image and use it as an overlay while shooting the next image. This meant that we could get Johana to adjust her poses to exactly align with the clothed shots.

Then in photoshop it was a simple matter of bringing the two images together.