The Same, But Different

These images came from a collaboration with make up artist Caja Dan and model Emma (Emerald on Model Mayhem).The idea was to shoot some mirror images and then composite the images together to show different expressions in the 'original' and mirror image Emmas.

I shot two exposures of each pose, one focused on Emma, and one on her reflection - this gave me maximum flexibility to mix and match during post producation. Eyes are usually the primary point of focus in portrait imagery, and I stuck with that convention. However I also wanted the reflected eyes to be reasonably sharp, which due to the wide aperture used and close proximity of camera to subject , wasn't the case when focusing on 'real' Emma.

Emma was brilliant to shoot with; she had to be very disciplined in the same way that a model posing for an artist might be; the slightest movement of her head between shots would interfere with the compositing process, so all she could move were her eyes and mouth. Sounds simple enough, but we naturally tend to move our heads a little when someone is speaking to us or giving direction.

The lighting needed to be controlled quite precisely too. Although skin may be softened in Photoshop, it's always best to start with a photo that is kind to the skin straight out of the camera. I used a medium octabox as the main light, with a white reflector to fill in the shadows a little. The octabox had to be positioned so as not to glare in the mirror, flatter the skin, whilst also providing some modelling or definition. Using the reflector as fill (rather than a second flash) prevented issues with glare as it was directly in front of the mirror.

Whilst a fan of all-in editing (which is not to everyone's taste) I don't normally go for sfx that are really obviously artificial. However, I thought it might be interesting to create a variant that presented a 'negative' of Emma as the reflection.
Most of the compositing in this series was relatively straight forward, requiring basic manipulation of layers, layer masks, selection tools and blending modes.  This last image was a little more time consuming as the 'join' involved a lot more contrast between the two source images, so needed to be particularly smooth.

Over The Hill: Three Faces of.... Tim

I had to (kind of) break with my usual thread naming convention for this update, as the shoot presented here is part of a project by Tim Andrews. Here's Tim in his own words:

OVER THE HILL

“Alright boys, this is it, over the hill” is the intro of the song “Bring on Lucie” by John Lennon and, although the phrase ‘over the hill’ has somewhat negative connotations, it is announced on the record in a very positive way by Lennon who goes on to sing ‘Do it, do it, do it, do it now!’ and so, for me, the title of this exhibition is optimistic despite the double meaning.

In May 2007, I answered an advertisement in Time Out from Graeme Montgomery, whom I know now to be an extremely talented professional photographer. He was compiling a book of nudes and wanted to photograph the first 100 people to answer the advert so I thought ‘why not?’ and went along and found that I was number one! Strangely enough, two other photographers advertised in the following two issues of Time Out, this time for people to pose for portraits, and they both photographed me subsequently. That was that for a while until, in February 2008, I answered an advert in our local newspaper from a student, Daisy Lang, who wanted to photograph people with illnesses for her final year’s project. Subsequently, I discovered that there were many photographers advertising on the Internet for models for particular projects. I wrote an email to the first photographer explaining that I was 57 and had Parkinson’s Disease and that ‘I wanted to continue on my path of being photographed by different people during the course of my illness’. Suddenly, as I wrote those words, I realised that I had my own project.

Since then, over seventy different photographers have photographed me and it has been incredibly interesting and exciting as I have seen the project develop day by day. I have met many wonderful, skilful people many of whom, normally, I would never have met let alone spent several hours with them.

It has been a fascinating journey. I have always loved photography but never had the patience or skill to practice it successfully. However, being a model has enabled me to collaborate with brilliant practitioners of the art and to be part of the artistic photographic process.

I had not discussed the proposed title of the exhibition with anyone until I met Roberto Foddai to talk about his ideas for our shoot. He produced two pieces of headgear he wanted me to wear and said that one of them had some wording on it which he felt was somewhat ironic. He turned it over and on the front were the words – ‘Over the Hill’.

Free the people, now.
Do it, do it, do it, do it now.

Tim Andrews

I did three short sets with Tim.

First up are images of Tim staring out at the denuded branches of trees in winter.

Next are a couple of simple portraits. I used mixed lighting for these - flash and modelling lights with an exposure of about 5 seconds.

Lastly there are 3 images inspired by the artwork for the BBC serialisation of Gormenghast. I wanted to do a fun fantasy set, and referencing Mervyn Peake seemed appropriate for reasons that will be obvious to anyone familiar with that great writer.