Today I feel like new things need to begin, so it seems more than appropriate to present another one from the series GLAUBE | LIEBE | HOFFNUNG (Faith, Love, Hope). It is entitled GEBURT (Birth).
Chantal, our six year old model for this image, was a real trooper and professionally endured the massive strobe power we threw at her. In fact, this image was shot in bright daylight, while I pulled a heavy key shift to create the nightly feel. I underexposed the background by 5 stops and compensated the Elinchrom strobes accordingly. I had one bare strobe head sitting in the hole in the ground in front of Chantal and large softbox to her right.
The location was the backyard of a friendly farmer in Germany. Besides his farming business he runs a holiday lodge which overlooks the location. While I was digging the hole the night before, all of his guests were standing on the balcony watching me. Until the shoot the next day, conspiracy theories about the strange proceedings went haywire. Dead dog, treasure hunt and terror attack were among them…
At the end of the day it’s a seemingly innocent picture about planting new and exciting things in the secrecy of the night.
Posted by nicolas_henri on February 16th, 2010 :: Filed under
Lighting,
Making Of,
On Location,
Photography,
Set,
UncategorizedTags ::
Birth,
child,
conspiray,
Faith,
Glaube,
Hoffnung,
hole,
Hope,
Liebe,
Love
After a really busy week I was thrilled when I found the new album by Mabon in the mail today. Their new record is entitled “Stampede of the Damned” and I was fortunate enough to shoot the cover for it:
Album cover for "Stampede of the Damned" by "Mabon"
To create the cover image we shot all of the band members individually against a black background in my studio. Each exposure lasted 6 seconds, while I had the modeling lights of my Elinchrom flash heads running. Within those 6 seconds of exposure I asked the band to move around, kicking and screaming as if in agony. During the long exposure I manually triggered the strobes to freeze a few moments in time, while the rest of the movement was smeared due to the long exposure. The resulting images looked something like this:
6 second exposure with multiple strobe bursts
6 Second Exposure with multiple strobe bursts
Multiple frames likes these of all of the band members where then composed into one burst of humanoid emotion… at least that’s what it felt like while I composed the final result.
The final result after compositing the individual shots
Once again this project proved to me that working with musicians is one of the most rewarding things to do as a visual creative. Mabon’s new record is available now through their website!
Posted by nicolas_henri on February 5th, 2010 :: Filed under
Artist Technique,
Photography,
Post ProductionTags ::
band,
Composing,
long exposure,
Mabon,
music,
Stampede of the Damned,
strobe
