My new show GLAUBE | LIEBE | HOFFNUNG (Faith, Love, Hope) has finally opened last weekend (Details here and here) and I am very happy how well it was received! As promised in my last post I will be sharing a lot of background info and BTS video from the shoots involved in the production. The project itself derives it’s title from three principal images. Today we will start with a closer look at the creation of GLAUBE (Faith).

It all started back in November 2008, when we set out on a beautiful autumn day to create the image above. In facty it started a lot earlier than that, because the planning and pre-production for this one took almost two months. And as the title of the image suggests, quite a bit of it had to do with keeping the faith…

(Keep on reading + video after the break)

The location I chose was a field in between two stretches of forest. Remember, unless you are shooting in Uzbekistan (or maybe even there) you will have to get permits for almost any place, when you plan to show up with a lot of gear and crew! So my first stop was at the local police office to get vehicle permits to drive on the forest routes. (We had a ton of equipment and some 40+ people to get there!) At the police station I also got the info on the owner of the field. I was slightly dreading to call the farmer (quite feasibly an age old geezer) and ask him whether it was OK to march onto his field with some 40-50 people, three cars and loads of gear to make “artful” pictures for an exhibition… “Oh No! There will be absolutely no damage to your crops, Sir!”

But I kept my faith in the image and to my surprise it turned out that the farmer owning the field was the very same I have been buying pumpkins from for the past few years (I am a huge fan of pumpkins, I cook them every which way imaginable!). When I talked to him and told him I was the one buying half a dozen every week we had everything settled and sealed with shake of hands.

That left me with the problem of getting a whole bunch of folks out on a field in the middle of nowhere and sacrifice their Saturday afternoon for a crazy idea of mine. I put out an email to everyone I know, stating my case and asking for support. It was an overwhelming experience to see the willingness of so many people, many of which I didn’t even know - they had heard from friends that something cool was going down and opted to be on the ride! Once again my faith in the image payed off.

The date was set. Permits in place. Extras booked. Two drivers were hired to bring the extras to the location (one picking up folks from the nearest train station, the other from the closest parking lot). Logistics are the key ingredient when pulling off a shoot of this scale! We had planned this shoot for two months, meticulously working out all the details down to a by the minute time table.

With everything else worked out, lighting a scene like this was the next challenge! We worked four Elinchrom Rangers, firing 8 flash heads. As can be seen above, I lined up 6 strobes along the line where the “Believers” would be standing. Each pair (powered by a Ranger) was stopped down by one f-stop towards the back of scene, relative to the additional two heads at the very front. There we had a beauty dish on a Manfrotto boom stand working as the main light, balanced for a slightly hot exposure. Beside it I placed a large softbox from the side as a fill to provide an even illumination of the most dominant figures at the front. The idea behind this lighting setup was to provide a sense that an ambiguous light was breaking from the heavens, gracing the “Believers” as they “waited in line to be illuminated”, while fading towards the back, where folks are farther away from “faith” so to speak. The whole concept behind the image is a somewhat cynical look at where faith can (mis-)lead us and I am using light to tell the story.

While dozens and dozens of extras came pouring in with the shuttle service, we handed out the white cloth, everyone was supposed to be wrapped up in and waited for the sun to reach the “sweet spot”. I had chosen this location, knowing where the sun would set, providing a natural backlight as it breaks through the evening clouds.

Of course I had no idea what the weather would be like, for all I knew it was November and I might as well have had a snow storm to deal with - and rescheduling would have been close to impossible! But once again it appears my faith, my belief in the image was strong enough and we were awarded with perfect conditions. (As it turns out it was the last nice day before winter struck hard that year…)

When the sun had reached the position where I wanted it, we had all but 15 minutes to get the shot done before the ambient light would drop too low. And even so, I had to choose a slower shutter speed every other minute to compensate for the fading ambient light! Here’s the behind the scenes video with some impressions how it all went down:

NICOLAS HENRI - Behind the Scenes of GLAUBE from Nicolas Henri on Vimeo.

(Note: If you’re reading this via email or RSS subscription you may have to click here to see the video!)

I was able to grab about 80 frames before the ambient light was gone. But after all it was one single image we were after. Still it was a strange feeling that it all was done and over within a few minutes after weeks and weeks of prepping it. But this amount of pre-production was exactly what enabled me to make it happen in the end! So no matter what kind of project you do, if your prep work doesn’t consume considerably more time than the actual production you should be alerted - at least when you’re aspiring to reach a concise goal! And of course: Keep your faith in what you are doing!!!

Next up will be LIEBE (Love) - as soon as I get the video edited! So stay tuned for more…

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Posted by nicolas_henri on November 5th, 2009 :: Filed under Artist Technique, Exhibition, Lighting, Making Of, On Location, Photography
Tags :: Behind the scenes, Elinchrom, Exhibition, Faith, Glaube, Hoffnung, Hope, Liebe, Lighting, Logistics, Love, Making Of, video
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