At the end of the studio session with Johemiane, I handed her the old camera. This was so she would be included in the selfie series. As I have mentioned before this camera is used to link all my model shoots together.
I initially shot from the same position and with the same lights as we had done for the photographers wife. This is explained in much more detail in the previous post or shown in the diagram below.
While that was giving me an interesting take, it was not what I wanted. So I moved both her and myself back into a more traditional pose and location.
The final image was shot using my Lumix G9 camera 1/200s f8 ISO200. I imported it into Silver Efex Pro. I used the Black & White recipe I had created for all of the images taken that day.
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.
As I mentioned in the previous post I wanted to end the pool shoots with something different. That was to tell a story of a water maiden.
One of the items that I think we got from my in-laws estate was an old Victorian style pitcher. I knew that this would look good in an image. I also knew that my black lace with silver accents would look stunning Tanisha. Veils like this are great because they allow both modesty and sensuality at the same time.
The video below shows Behind behind-the-scenes of this part of the shoot.
While I knew the overall concept I was not sure exactly how it would look. Therefore to give me flexibility I insured that I shot Tanisha from different angles and also indifferent poses.
The images were shot on my Lumix G9 at f5.6 1/100s ISO200.
I had always intended that the black polythene would not be in the final image. It was acting as a backdrop.
I had downloaded a series of digital backdrops, made by Havelock North photographer Richard Woods. I chose the one that both matched the image while at the same time not overpowering it.
It was now time to put the concept together. In Lightroom I selected the background and the image of Tanisha. I then got the program to open them in Photoshop as separate layers. The layers are shown below.
I felt that the digital background was too sharp so I applied a surface blur to it. This was done using a smart filter so that I could come back and tweak it. I also pushed the brightness of the background.
I did the copy of the layer containing Tanisha and created a mask around her. As often happens when you bring multiple images together in a composite they do not exactly match. So I did a small queue and saturation adjustment.
I wanted this to resemble a painting, so I created a new layer by merging all of the others. Then, I applied the oil paint filter found under Filters: Stylize. I kept the setting really low as I did not want to overpower the underlying photo.
I was really pleased how the image came out and it has been well received when posted online. I cannot use it in competitions however as the use of the downloaded digital background disqualifies Me.
My second shoot in the 2023 Wellington Cosplay Photo Fest was with Dawn.
She was cosplaying Catwoman from the Batman series. Her costume was based on the original 1960’s television series. It was not based on the later movies.
For the shoot we chose Fort Balance which is an old World War 2 gun emplacement on the Miramar Peninsula. It is a favourite location for shooting. It has many great areas with a never-changing array of street art.
I am splitting the shoot into two post as the lighting for each was quite different.
For the initial shoot I had a concept of Catwoman being caught in the headlights of a police car. That meant that I wanted to have both blue and red lights illuminating the scene. Within the complex, there are a couple of rooms where there is next to no natural light. I knew they would be perfect for what I was wanting.
My camera was set at f8 1/200s and ISO100. This is my normal setting for studio work as it ensures full control of the light. Really given that I was in darkness anyway, I could have chosen different settings. But there is a little point in playing around when you know what works.
The original plan was to shoot using two speed lights at the same time. One would positioned camera left with a blue gel. The other would be positioned camera right covered with a red gel. This would have resulted in a wash of light.
The complex is on the top of the hill. It is just under a kilometre walk from where you can park the car. I decided not to carry all of the gear uphill. I chose what I thought I needed and left the remainder in the car. Unfortunately, when we went to set up the shoot, I realized the trigger for the second flash was in the car. It was not with us.
I decided not to waste time going back together. Instead, I repositioned the light. Then I took two shots, which I combined in Photoshop. This is not that difficult to do although I would have preferred to have shot in the field. It did require Dawn to replicate poses. Fortunately she was able to do this.
Apart from the mess up with the missing equipment, this part of the shoot went well. I was really pleased with the finished image.
You will know that I like to use studio strobes in my sessions if you have been following this blog. However that is not all I will use, especially when I can given a challenge. That happened at the end of 2022 when Devon asked if I wanted to do a shoot using Christmas light. Of course I said yes and we set up a time.
Devon is very creative. When she arrived, she had created a dress that had the lights built into it. I knew we were going to have a great session.
We started very simply with only the lights for her dress and a candle lighting the scene. I love using candles as they produce a very lovely light. However they don’t let off a lot of light and therefore a longer exposure was needed. We also needed to crank up the ISO
We then decided to get a little more complicated.
f4.5 1/40s ISO6400
I set up two c-stands arms. One in front and one behind Devon on which I hung lights. This enabled me to create depth in the images.
f4.5 1/25s ISO6400f10 1/10s ISO6400
For the final shot I brought in a LED hula hoop that I had Devon hold. As this was going to be a longer exposure I also set up a flash to fire at the end of the exposure. This meant that I would get a sharp image of Devon as well as the effect of the lights.
f10 1.3s IS0320
It was a fun shoot and we both loved the images that came out of it.
Within the Photographic Society of New Zealand there is an honours system. It is based on submitting a portfolio of images that are then assessed by a panel. In August 2022, I successfully achieved the associate level. After this achievement, I started working on the set for the top fellowship level.
The Fellowship requires you to submit 18 images that tell a story. I decided that it would be based on the way in which we use our hands. I drew up a list of the shots that I wanted.
When Connor and Kassie came for their shoot I asked if there would take part. With Connor I wanted to show “washing” set up a basin in the garage.
I used a single light positioned camera right with a reflector on the other side. Fill was provided by the doorway to the garage. The camera was set at 1/200s f8 ISO200. While this is not a particular fast shutter speed I knew that the flash would freeze the action.
In order to maintain consistency in the set I had decided that all images would be black & white. I edited the images in Photoshop first. Then, I ran them through Nik Silver Efex. There, I developed a particular recipe. This recipe gave me the gritty high contrast I was after.
This is the fourth and final post from my 2022 Halloween themed shoot.
After we had finished outside the other two photographers decided that they had enough images. So we moved back into the studio and I shot on my own.
I started taking individual photos and let the models interact as they liked. Devon got right into character again and produced some great images.
With Katie I suggested that she mentioned we were doing her formal wedding photos. As usual my cat Beanie decided to make an appearance and ensure she got into at least one shot. When then added with the slight edition of a skull.
The main light was my Godox AD600 in a 1.5 m octabox positioned at a 90° angle camera left. This provided for in coverage and insured that we got catchlight in the eyes. A reflector camera right provided a bit of fill on that side. At the rear of the room an Elincron D400 fired into a 7″ umbrella with a diffusion panel to further provide fill.
I have bought a almost full size skeleton and so Devon had fun interacting with it.
Yhe month before the shoot I had travelled to Christchurch and spent some time in the Christchurch Museum. In one of the rooms they had animal skeletons on display. I thought these could be useful. So, I took a couple of photos. I then composed them into an image with Devon and Katie. I was quite pleased with the result
All of the images we shot with my Nikon Z6ii camera using a 24 -70 4.0 lens. camera was in manual mode set a 1/200s f8 at ISO100.
In my camera collection I have an old double lens camera . The camera doesn’t work but models seem to find it interesting. Therefore I have used it as a link image by getting them to imagine using it to take a selfie.
pwfotos 