I recently attended a photoshoot over at Tankspace in Nottingham. It is a specialist photography studio with a very specific set-up: i.e. a large tank of water.
I first showed some images from this set for the 'Monomad' Competition, and now its time to show off some of the colour images...
But first, its worth taking a little time to explain the set up:
Inside the studio, there is a large tank of water. It measured approximately 5 1/2 feet tall and 10 feet wide. There was 2 large LED lights lighting the tank from the top, and then there were 2 smaller LED panels, one on each side of the tank. On one side of the tank was a large tent-like structure which is where we (the photographers) were stood.
One of the problems of taking photographs through glass, is that there are annoying reflections, which will spoil the final image. With this set up of the water being fully lit, and the photographers being stood in the dark, there were no reflections, which mean we could focus on taking pictures.... and lots of pictures were taken on this day....
In the space of 6 hours I took almost 2000 pictures.
Two. Thousand. Pictures. (that is NOT a typo haha)
Why was this...?
Well, the trouble with the model being submerged in water, is that she can't hear us. In fact, with the lighting set up of the water being well lit, and the photographers in darkness, she can barely see us.
This meant that there was a lot of trial and error involved. The model swam back and forwards a couple of times and then paused to breath, and then went again. We had cameras set on 'burst mode' and took as many as we could. Hoping that at least one image out of a long sequence would work.
So some out takes. Here the pose is ok, but her face is dark. We asked if the model could try again, but turn her head towards the light....
Thats better, we can now see the detail of her face...
...yep her face is nicely lit... not sure about the pose though, this side on position is not very interesting.
Um.. Can the model angle her body towards us slightly?
Ah, now that is more interesting... but you've forgotten about the light... can you keep that body angle, and turn your head towards the light please?
There we go! Now theres a keeper!
As you can see, there was a lot of trial and error, and when I say it was hit and miss, there were definately more misses than hits.
But when it worked, and all the elements came together, the results were pretty good!
Now lets quickly put that image into Photoshop:
I re-cropped it slightly, and removed some of the distacting bubbles near her head. Then I adjusted the colour slightly by adding a hint of purple/magenta. All that was left to do was to slightly sharpen her head and shoulders and voila! A completed image.
Now to go through all the rest of them!
When I was first invited onto this shoot, I had no idea what to expect. In the end I had a fantastic day, and in amongst the thousands of shots I think I got some beautiful images. I'll share the best of them on here over the next few weeks, but for now I will leave you with a little teaser of what you can look forward to :-)
Thank you for reading, I hope you found it interesting.
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