Black background - colourful streamers

Hey !

I've been day dreaming about this shoot for a while. I managed to convince a good friend of mine, Annika, to model for the idea (Thanks Annika!) This sort if modeling must be arguably the hardest style of modeling around!

I headed off to a fabric store and puchased 3 x 2m rolls of colourful satin fabric which I then tore and cut into strips.

We tied these around Annikas feet, wrists and forearms.

The idea was to create as much motion and colour as possible off set against a black background for striking contrast.

I spread out a king sized sheet over the pool wall which was held down with rocks both above and below water. I then attached a second sheet to the floor of the pool to increase the black area I had to work with.

Post production was entirely done in Lightroom V2. Lightroom involved adjustment curves, clarity, sharpeness, luminosity noise reduction, white balancing, luminosity adjustments for the streamers (selective colour adjustment - same as dodging and burning) and very minor burning.

no 1 - 2 x strobes facing forward and using the edge lighting technique

no 2

no 3 - The ripples in this shot were generated by holding a single strobe above water pointing directly at the subject. Strobe was set to -1 power (ds51).

no 4

no 5 - The ripples in this shot were generated by holding a single strobe above water pointing directly at the subject. Strobe was set to -1 power (ds51). a 2nd strobe was used underwater and set to -2 to act as fill light for the models face

no 6

no 7 - When sorting through the shots I had a bit of a chuckle over this one. Its an exact compositonal copy of Howard Schatz's (probably my favourite photographer) famous shot albiet no where near as good and no where near as many streamers. Although shooting this does give me some idea on how he did his shot. I'm assuming he had strobes above water (just infront of the model) that were linked (opticically?) to the strobe. He probably used umbrellas given the even spread of light. I just can't see how he could have gotten such a large background dark but still maintain perfect lighting on the model by using ordinary strobes........ man, he's good!

no 8

I hope you enjoyed them!

once again, a special thanks to Annika as this was extremely difficult modeling.

Cheers

Cal

Awesome, Cal. I really like 1 and 2 - and 5. Her facial expressions are perfect - they don't have that weird u/w effect to them that many models seem to have.

Really enjoy your posts!

really cool!

Awesome.

First one is the winner for me !!

Cal your images always facinate me. You have such a creative attitude towards the work that you do. Your planning, the models you use, your knowledge and your post processing all rolled into one ball, gives stunning images.

Keep up the good work

Stew

Hi Cal,

Yes, these are your best yet. I like #2 because she looks like a happy Natalie Portman. And I like #7 because of the reflection. Can you tell us how you lit these?

Cheers

James

Real nice Work Cal. #1 and #2 stand out. Great facial expressions.

Thanks guys!

James - I feel that I had the best control over lighting for these shots. Mostly due to the tips I've been getting from you guys! Theres a quick caption on the lighting above a few of the shots.

The strobes varied between 1 and 2 ds 51 strobes. Ripples were created with a single strobe above water and a fill light strobe below. I held the strobes out with my arm and moved the position around accordingly. Other then that I just used 2 strobes facing forward with edge lighting .

Cheers!

Cal