Light as a Feather

Thoughts on shooting nudes and fashion. chris@vongsawat.com
Natural sunlight.  

Natural sunlight.  

Model Film: Helena

Production:

For this film the main focus was the eye makeup and Helena moving in and out of shadows.  I had her improvise swaying in and out of the light.  Occasionally I’d tell her to look in certain directions, look at me, to blink, or to turn her head and body in different directions.  Overall though, it was her slowly moving through various poses and I just moved the camera to where it seemed the most interesting.  She led the movement and I followed.  

As usual, I overshot with as much variety as possible (different crops, heights, zooms, camera moves, front, profile, etc.), though I didn’t really do much full body coverage.  I didn’t feel like showing her lower half was really going to add much to the film.  I shot some stuff anyway just incase, but I felt like I got stronger material just focusing on the upper body.  

Camera is a Canon 7D with a 24-105mm F/4.0 L shooting at 60fps 720.  The light is just sunlight coming in through a window at 4PM, nothing else.  All the shots are handheld.  No stabilizers.

Music:

Originally I had one song in mind when I was editing, but then I happened to stumble upon Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang.”  I played the edit I had at the time over my original choice and Sinatra, and the Sintatra version was a lot more interesting.  It’s somewhat of a strange and unexpected choice and I didn’t really have a model film with a song quite so slow and minimal.  

Editing:

After I go through several passes of pulling out clips, looking at them in slow motion, and cutting it down to my top choices, I try to arrange them in some kind of logical order.  In this case, from American Flag top, to bra, to topless.  I had enough footage to go all American Flag, or all topless, but unfortunately, it can be pretty annoying having too many choices on which way a film can go.  In the end I decided that I liked the variety of using all three tops.  

After that, I tried to match up what I considered important parts of the song to footage that seems to imply what the lyrics are saying.  It’s definitely not anything literal, but if the lyrics are about clothes, I try to use a shot of clothes.  If it’s about something sad, I try to use a shot of the model looking troubled (as opposed to confident, sexy, or flirtatious).  It’s a very ambiguous and subjective match, but some shots are clearly not the right picks for certain lyrics.  I don’t do it for all the lyrics, just for the ones that seem important.  

I actually try not to have a consistent pattern with my editing.  For instance, I did quick cuts for some of the “bang bang” lyrics, a cut for each “bang.”  I used the technique for most of those parts, but not all of them.  I find that if you establish patterns like that and use them selectively and strategically break the pattern, it adds a kind of pop to when you do apply whatever pattern or relationship you’re establishing.  Definitely a very subjective and interpretive “rule.”  I guess I see it as making the edit a little messier, more organic to the rhythm and flow of the images and music.  It’s not forced arbitrarily.  There’s more up and down, more peaks and valleys, more texture.  It’s not smooth or even.

Color Grading:

I went for a heavy diffusion and soft light effect.  It’s something I’ve seen in a few photos and fashion films and it’s something I wanted to experiment with and understand.  

The first step was adding a diffusion effect in Magic Bullet 2 to a base video layer (I’m working in Adobe Premiere Pro).  I then copied the layer, added a bit of a gaussian blur, and then set the blending mode to soft light.  It wasn’t blurry enough for me, and increasing the gaussian blur didn’t look right, so I copied a third layer on top of all that, added a camera blur effect, and reduced the opacity.  

The darks were too dark, so I added a white solid layer and set the blending mode to screen at 20% opacity to mimic bringing up the black output levels like I would normally do to images in Photoshop.  That brings up detail in the blacks and makes the contrast less severe, but only by affecting the dark areas.  I wanted to tint the shadows slightly, so I added a dark blue exclusion layer on top of the white screen layer.  Lastly, I added a cyan layer set to color mode at 10% opacity on top of all that to bring down some of the yellow saturation.  I did some fine tuning with Magic Bullet for individual clips that didn’t seem to match the rest of the film.  

Why the White Letterbox?

I added the white letterbox for several reasons.  The main reason is, there’s some nudity in the film, and I felt like some of it was a bit distracting, like it took away from the darker, somber mood.  The letterbox allowed me to effectively censor some of it—not remove it all, but reduce it to a level I was comfortable with.  I wanted there to be some nudity, clear shots of her back, some shots of her breasts, but I didn’t want it to take away from the main point—the eye makeup, the lighting, the mood.

Second, while I’ve seen the diffused light/soft light effect done before, I haven’t really seen it paired up with a white letterbox before, so I thought it would help differentiate it among other films with similar treatments in addition to any differences arising from my content, editing, and music choice.  

Third, I’ve been wanting to do more experiments with 2.35 x 1 aspect videos.  I wanted to see what kind of compositional challenges it presents and what kind of advantages it provides.  It’s a different way of having to see things, especially when it comes to closeups.  It’s an interesting challenge, and if skillfully applied, I think it’s a useful tool in the toolbox to have.  

See more of my fashion/model films on my website here:

www.vongsawat.com

or on my Vimeo page here:

http://vimeo.com/user6285292/videos

Split tone treatment.  Put a little blue in the highlights and tan into the shadows.  Brought up the black output levels and brought down the white input levels.  

Split tone treatment.  Put a little blue in the highlights and tan into the shadows.  Brought up the black output levels and brought down the white input levels.  

I usually have the model style herself with whatever wardrobe she can bring.  In this case, this shirt happened to be something the MUA had on and we decided to throw it on the model.  Personally, I love when the MUA shows up and she’s a fashionista.   Light is an AB800 with a mounted reflector placed close to the model screen right.  Shot in RAW in black and white, converted to color and then I tweaked the temperature and tone in LR.   My direction for the model was basically to put movement into the fringes of the shirt, pull it in weird ways, and do unexpected things.  It was kind of a dancing rhythm we ended up with (I think I was playing some Skrillex at the time).  Thing about dancing though, I don’t necessarily want the images to look like dancing shots.  I’m looking for the sway, bounce, fall, and twist in her poses, but not necessarily the shape or lines of a girl dancing.  I’m still looking for an editorial fashion aesthetic.  Sometimes I’ll even ask the girl to “dance” against the beat, like move with a completely different energy than the song.  Like she’ll move slow and caress herself while the song is upbeat.  Sometimes in that conflict, interesting things happen.  And if it doesn’t result in anything useful, we abandon it and try something else.  

I usually have the model style herself with whatever wardrobe she can bring.  In this case, this shirt happened to be something the MUA had on and we decided to throw it on the model.  Personally, I love when the MUA shows up and she’s a fashionista.  

Light is an AB800 with a mounted reflector placed close to the model screen right.  Shot in RAW in black and white, converted to color and then I tweaked the temperature and tone in LR.  

My direction for the model was basically to put movement into the fringes of the shirt, pull it in weird ways, and do unexpected things.  It was kind of a dancing rhythm we ended up with (I think I was playing some Skrillex at the time).  Thing about dancing though, I don’t necessarily want the images to look like dancing shots.  I’m looking for the sway, bounce, fall, and twist in her poses, but not necessarily the shape or lines of a girl dancing.  I’m still looking for an editorial fashion aesthetic.  Sometimes I’ll even ask the girl to “dance” against the beat, like move with a completely different energy than the song.  Like she’ll move slow and caress herself while the song is upbeat.  Sometimes in that conflict, interesting things happen.  And if it doesn’t result in anything useful, we abandon it and try something else.  

Shooting more with harsh and direct sunlight.  This was toward the end of the shoot and the model and I had already built up a choreography and a way of communicating.  In other words, she already had a good sense of what I was looking for.  I tend to start my shoots with simpler lighting or setups so I can focus more on directing, and as time goes on, move towards more complex situations or newer ideas.  If the model and I build a good sense for each other, I won’t have to guide or instruct her much (though I’ll still keep talking to her to keep the feedback, communication, and connection going) and I can focus on the lights and shadows. Here the model’s just on a bed with a nearby window.  It’s about 4PM here, so not exactly sunset, but a little closer to it.  Shooting sunlight indoors requires keeping an eye on the time and tracking how the sunlight moves in a room shining in through a window.  If I had shot earlier or later, the little patch of direct sunlight I would have to work with would be in a different part of the room—maybe on the wall instead of on the bed.   I shot this in a black and white preview (which is how I always shoot), to get a strong sense of how the blacks, whites, and greys play off each other.  I strip away the color so I can focus on just the lighting.  Since I know I’m going to spend time in post, I don’t really worry about color all that much in production unless I’m using something like a tungsten or fluorescent light (I have to worry about competing or distracting color temperatures which takes time to fix in post that I’d prefer not to spend).  I can adjust the color temperatures in the RAW later on, so the color situation doesn’t matter to me so much.  Additionally, there’s a lot of latitude to adjust and fix colors in post, but almost no room to change how shadows fall.  You can fix and adjust shadows in post, but from my experience it always takes WAY more time to fix in post than it does to deal with in production.   A lot of the treatment here involved manipulating the tones in the RAW file in LR.  I brought the shadows way up and used some additional local exposure adjustments so that the details in the shadows weren’t completely blacked out.  High contrast situations like direct sunlight indoors, quickly leads to colors getting blown out and over saturated.  So I brought down the saturation by half.  I didn’t want to use the normal expected colors you see close to sunset (orange/yellow), so I tinted the image slightly green, cooled it down, and applied a split tone treatment with some blue in the highlights and tan in the shadows.  And then I finished it off by adjusting the levels in PS a bit—bringing down the midtone input levels and bringing up the black output levels.  I’m a fan of bringing up the black output levels because I like how it mimics the look of black printed on matte paper.   One final thought.  I like collages.  Sometimes I do them out of indecision, like I just happen to like a few images from a set and I don’t want to narrow it down to just one.  But, I also like collages like this because I feel that it adds to a sense of movement.  There’s movement implied in the individual images, but even more movement is “communicated” by putting the images next to each other.  There’s a sense of time moving, which is also interesting because depending on how you arrange it, it’s not a linear progression from past to future.  Here there’s nothing that really tells you which of the images constitutes a “beginning,” “middle,” or “end.”  It’s a moment you can witness from several different points in time simultaneously, not something you can do with a single image or with film (I guess unless you collage several films to play simultaneously, but even then, each individual film would progress linearly).  

Shooting more with harsh and direct sunlight.  This was toward the end of the shoot and the model and I had already built up a choreography and a way of communicating.  In other words, she already had a good sense of what I was looking for.  I tend to start my shoots with simpler lighting or setups so I can focus more on directing, and as time goes on, move towards more complex situations or newer ideas.  If the model and I build a good sense for each other, I won’t have to guide or instruct her much (though I’ll still keep talking to her to keep the feedback, communication, and connection going) and I can focus on the lights and shadows.

Here the model’s just on a bed with a nearby window.  It’s about 4PM here, so not exactly sunset, but a little closer to it.  Shooting sunlight indoors requires keeping an eye on the time and tracking how the sunlight moves in a room shining in through a window.  If I had shot earlier or later, the little patch of direct sunlight I would have to work with would be in a different part of the room—maybe on the wall instead of on the bed.  

I shot this in a black and white preview (which is how I always shoot), to get a strong sense of how the blacks, whites, and greys play off each other.  I strip away the color so I can focus on just the lighting.  Since I know I’m going to spend time in post, I don’t really worry about color all that much in production unless I’m using something like a tungsten or fluorescent light (I have to worry about competing or distracting color temperatures which takes time to fix in post that I’d prefer not to spend).  I can adjust the color temperatures in the RAW later on, so the color situation doesn’t matter to me so much.  Additionally, there’s a lot of latitude to adjust and fix colors in post, but almost no room to change how shadows fall.  You can fix and adjust shadows in post, but from my experience it always takes WAY more time to fix in post than it does to deal with in production.  

A lot of the treatment here involved manipulating the tones in the RAW file in LR.  I brought the shadows way up and used some additional local exposure adjustments so that the details in the shadows weren’t completely blacked out.  High contrast situations like direct sunlight indoors, quickly leads to colors getting blown out and over saturated.  So I brought down the saturation by half.  I didn’t want to use the normal expected colors you see close to sunset (orange/yellow), so I tinted the image slightly green, cooled it down, and applied a split tone treatment with some blue in the highlights and tan in the shadows.  And then I finished it off by adjusting the levels in PS a bit—bringing down the midtone input levels and bringing up the black output levels.  I’m a fan of bringing up the black output levels because I like how it mimics the look of black printed on matte paper.  

One final thought.  I like collages.  Sometimes I do them out of indecision, like I just happen to like a few images from a set and I don’t want to narrow it down to just one.  But, I also like collages like this because I feel that it adds to a sense of movement.  There’s movement implied in the individual images, but even more movement is “communicated” by putting the images next to each other.  There’s a sense of time moving, which is also interesting because depending on how you arrange it, it’s not a linear progression from past to future.  Here there’s nothing that really tells you which of the images constitutes a “beginning,” “middle,” or “end.”  It’s a moment you can witness from several different points in time simultaneously, not something you can do with a single image or with film (I guess unless you collage several films to play simultaneously, but even then, each individual film would progress linearly).  

Playing around with continuous light.  This is actually a Kino Flo 4x4 bank I placed screen left at 45 degrees to her front.  You can get a sense for the size of the light by the softness of the shadow behind her.  She’s directly lit and I didn’t really do anything too unconventional.  It’s a solid setup, though not necessarily one that’s all that different. I usually shoot photos with flashes.  I own a bunch of continuous lights for my video work.  I’ve been playing around with them lately for stills to see how the workflow might be different.  

Playing around with continuous light.  This is actually a Kino Flo 4x4 bank I placed screen left at 45 degrees to her front.  You can get a sense for the size of the light by the softness of the shadow behind her.  She’s directly lit and I didn’t really do anything too unconventional.  It’s a solid setup, though not necessarily one that’s all that different.

I usually shoot photos with flashes.  I own a bunch of continuous lights for my video work.  I’ve been playing around with them lately for stills to see how the workflow might be different.  

Feathered light setup with a softbox aimed directly at the ground in front of her.  Light is just out of frame near the top of her head.  It’s usually a setup I use for full-body shots, but while I’m shooting the set I make sure to shoot a few frames tighter just to see if the crop helps me see things differently.  Doing little things like that to keep my perspective fresh prevents me from getting tunnel vision.  If I keep a broad perspective, I’ll be more likely to see interesting ideas to explore as they come up.

Feathered light setup with a softbox aimed directly at the ground in front of her.  Light is just out of frame near the top of her head.  It’s usually a setup I use for full-body shots, but while I’m shooting the set I make sure to shoot a few frames tighter just to see if the crop helps me see things differently.  Doing little things like that to keep my perspective fresh prevents me from getting tunnel vision.  If I keep a broad perspective, I’ll be more likely to see interesting ideas to explore as they come up.

I’ve seen large collages like this with a few photographers with as many as 12 to 16 images.  I happened to really like this set with Svetlana, so I thought I’d give it a try.  What I like about it is that it shows off a few things, 1) the range of the model and 2) the range of the photographer.  It’s one thing to see one shot of a model by itself, but another to see several shots of her from the same set.  You get a feel for what she’s capable of in one go.  Also, even though it’s mostly on the model to produce a solid series of poses and ideas, it still reflects positively on the photographer, though be it a bit more indirectly.  I know when I see photos like this from other photographers, it makes me feel like they know how to shoot a good set.  Now, who knows how much of that was really the photographer and how much of it was the model, so you look at the rest of the portfolio and see how often that sort of energy spills over into other images.  I know personally, as a photographer who focuses a lot on direction and working the relationship, I value and respect that skill in others.

I’ve seen large collages like this with a few photographers with as many as 12 to 16 images.  I happened to really like this set with Svetlana, so I thought I’d give it a try.  What I like about it is that it shows off a few things, 1) the range of the model and 2) the range of the photographer.  It’s one thing to see one shot of a model by itself, but another to see several shots of her from the same set.  You get a feel for what she’s capable of in one go.  Also, even though it’s mostly on the model to produce a solid series of poses and ideas, it still reflects positively on the photographer, though be it a bit more indirectly.  I know when I see photos like this from other photographers, it makes me feel like they know how to shoot a good set.  Now, who knows how much of that was really the photographer and how much of it was the model, so you look at the rest of the portfolio and see how often that sort of energy spills over into other images.  I know personally, as a photographer who focuses a lot on direction and working the relationship, I value and respect that skill in others.

This image is a result of wanting to play around with some custom light leaks I photographed using free lensing and some sunlight. If you’re not familiar with free lensing, learn more about it here: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/insights/blogs/photography/how-freelensing.html So I applied one of the light leaks onto these photos of Amy, and I didn’t really like how they were looking, and I was going back and forth between whether I wanted to apply them at all (save it for another photo), or if I wanted to just focus on another effect, lowering the white output levels to gray out the whites.  So after messing around for awhile, I decided to try and combine them. I happen to be a fan of cut off photos collaged together (something similar in spirit to what I’ve seen in a lot of Avedon’s large format group portraits), so I tried to sort of merge all the effects together.   At first, the application was a bit heavy handed and I felt like it was looking more like something a graphic designer would put together than a photographer, but after pulling back a little on the light leak effect, I think I got it to the point where the superficial treatment balanced out with the underlying content.  I really didn’t want to overpower or overshadow Amy’s facial expression, posing, and energy.  I wanted her to still be “the point” of the image, not flashy colors and some weird treatment for the sake of novelty alone.  But, I also wanted to deliver the content in a stickier way.   Ultimately though, this was really about experimenting and trying new things.  Some will love, some will hate, some will like, some won’t care.    

This image is a result of wanting to play around with some custom light leaks I photographed using free lensing and some sunlight.

If you’re not familiar with free lensing, learn more about it here:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/insights/blogs/photography/how-freelensing.html

So I applied one of the light leaks onto these photos of Amy, and I didn’t really like how they were looking, and I was going back and forth between whether I wanted to apply them at all (save it for another photo), or if I wanted to just focus on another effect, lowering the white output levels to gray out the whites.  So after messing around for awhile, I decided to try and combine them. I happen to be a fan of cut off photos collaged together (something similar in spirit to what I’ve seen in a lot of Avedon’s large format group portraits), so I tried to sort of merge all the effects together.  

At first, the application was a bit heavy handed and I felt like it was looking more like something a graphic designer would put together than a photographer, but after pulling back a little on the light leak effect, I think I got it to the point where the superficial treatment balanced out with the underlying content.  I really didn’t want to overpower or overshadow Amy’s facial expression, posing, and energy.  I wanted her to still be “the point” of the image, not flashy colors and some weird treatment for the sake of novelty alone.  But, I also wanted to deliver the content in a stickier way.  

Ultimately though, this was really about experimenting and trying new things.  Some will love, some will hate, some will like, some won’t care.