My shoot with Laura Hollick the other evening was a multi-purpose one. We were aiming to get three things out of this evening’s shoot: a video, a “magazine cover” photo and a more artistic photo. Sue Upton did a great job with hair and makeup, transforming Laura into the field fairy.
We shot all of this at “Golden Hour,” which is that magical period just before sunset when everything looks like a fairy tale. Unfortunately, because of cloud cover, golden hour didn’t materialize in quite the striking way it usually does at this time of year. However, it was still a good time to shoot. When it’s a little overcast, the brightness of foreground and sky are close enough at this time of day so you can get some nice sky details in your backgrounds rather than boring white.
The video is a visual poem. It was fun shooting this, because it really challenged me to find new and interesting ways to frame shots and move the camera. This was the first attempt at using our new Blackbird DSLR camera stabilizer. It was a challenging test. The Blackbird has a piece that dangles down beneath the camera. That piece has a crossbar on it. While moving through the field, the crossbar would constantly touch or impact on grasses and other plants, often making the shots waver unpredictably. In the end, because we didn’t need a lot of footage, it wasn’t a problem. However, my arm was so numb after holding this stabilized rig steady for about an hour, I could barely operate the camera for the regular photos! Using this thing regularly is going to make my left bicep humongous.
Admittedly, I’m relatively new at shooting and editing video, but today’s tools make both so easy and intuitive. It wasn’t hard to get a result that we were both happy with.
Millions of tiny dramas are happening every day in New York City. Turn your lens in any direction, focus on even the smallest fragment, and you’re bound to capture them.
Shot with Canon 5D MkII with Hartblei 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator. You can view it in HD on Youtube.
As you might have guessed from my recent posts, Laura Hollick and I were in NYC last week. We decided to take advantage of this situation to shoot some photos and video in that most iconic of Manhattan locations, Times Square. As a photographer, the challenge was going to be to be able to capture the energy and bright lights of Times Square, while at the same time featuring Laura in a way that made her stand out.
We brought in hair and makeup artist Tim Wilkins to help prepare Laura for the shoot. He did a great job creating a subtle, shimmering and almost elfish look to integrate her silver wig and silver leaf dress.
Once Tim was done with the hair and makeup, Laura and I hopped in cab and headed midtown and into the madness. Anyone who’s been there knows that it’s a total zoo at all hours of day and night. We quickly scouted the area and staked out some sidewalk for our shoot.
I wanted to show the very famous billboards and neon in the background, but allow a close crop that would put the focus on Laura. Shooting from a low angle allowed this to happen. I chose a low shutter speed (1/30) to slightly blur the action around her, and a wide angle lens (24mm) to create some slightly supernatural drama. The wide aperture of f/2.8 created the shallow-ish depth of field effect to separate her from the background as much as possible, but because the lens is wide, the background is still distinguishable. As you might know, the wider your lens, the harder it is to get really shallow depth of field. That was fine though, since I wanted to keep Times Square recognizable as our setting.
The general lighting of the scene was amply provided by the bright billboards all around, and I set them to be slightly over-exposed. I didn’t want the contents of the signs to be too distracting. Over-exposing them slightly allowed them to appear mostly white, with some minor details in them that weren’t terribly distinguishable. All of this meant that Laura was in silhouette, so I added a fill light to make her pop. I set up my trusty little Vivitar 283 flash up high on a light stand and put a diffusing lens in front of it to soften it a bit. With such bright backlighting and no modeling light to preview the foreground, it was like shooting in the dark. I could only see her dark form against the bright background in the viewfinder. I trusted my camera’s autofocus to keep Laura in focus, and just posed her based on her silhouetted shape.
We shot for about half an hour. I didn’t think that our little photo shoot would create even the tiniest stir amidst all of the madness of Times Square, but I was wrong. We amassed a pretty-good sized audience, who mostly stood behind me. Often, people wanted to pose with photos with Laura and ask us questions.
It was a little distracting, but also fun to think that we added something to the experience of a few New York City visitors. When we finished shooting, I was surprised by a loud round of applause that broke out behind us! It was quite a night. Here’s the final image we selected from the shoot.
Here’s another image I shot after I was sure we’d gotten what we’d intended to shoot. I experimented by putting on a super-wide lens (12mm) and moved the camera during the long exposure. I still used the flash to sort of freeze a portion of the action. I like the vibrant, semi-abstract feel of this one.
We also shot some video to promote Laura’s Soul Art® Certification program.
Undoubtedly, one of Brooklyn’s most iconic locations is Coney Island. I had a day to kill earlier this week, so I decided to visit the park and boardwalk to take some pictures. I took the D train from Manhattan and just enjoyed the ride to the end of the line at Brooklyn’s southern tip. It was my intention to capture Coney Island’s very familiar scenes of classic Americana in an unusual way. I mean, almost everyone’s seen pictures of the Cyclone and Wonder Wheel, even if they might not have known exactly what they were looking at, so I brought along a super-wide lens and my bendy tilt-shift 65mm f/3.5 Hartblei Super-Rotator to try to put a slightly different spin on things. The skies were clear and the air was a sweltering 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees F), which made roasting on the pavement waiting for the exact moment to shoot an exercise in sweat tolerance. However, it was a lot of fun finding ways to throw the focus across different planes with the Super-Rotator, and to identify novel abstract angles with the super-wide lens. The direct sunlight created some lovely hard contrasts and bright colors. I think the unique bokeh effects created by the tilt-shift help to communicate the almost comatose state of heat stroke that I was experiencing out there!
On this last trip to NYC, we stayed at the Standard Hotel, located on Washington Street in the Meatpacking District. While there are many things non-standard about the Standard Hotel, what I found most interesting about it was its location straddling the High Line, an abandoned elevated rail line that has been converted into a pedestrian walkway and garden. It’s about 15 blocks long and is not only beautiful, but also practical; it’s a great way to see the stretch of Manhattan between 14th and 32nd Streets. The gardens are made up of a variety of local plants and flowers, decorated by public art pieces. It’s divided into a number of different “neighborhoods” along the way, including a sort of urban beach and an area for public performances. There are plenty of comfortable places to sit and gather with others. It’s inspiring to see urban spaces renewed and reused in this way. Not only is property value increased dramatically along this corridor, it provides a welcome refuge from the sweltering concrete jungle.
Here are some of my photos of the Standard Hotel and the High Line.
