Shooting the Shit...

Erin's Silver Dung Beetle (Final Shot)

Punny. Very Punny. Recently I've been working on website/look book material for jeweler, Erin Boukall. Although in her field it's standard to have work shot on white/seamless backgrounds, she has humored me in my excitement to show off her work in an environment related to the jewelry she makes. This type of shoot is a fun digression from some of my other more complicated builds/shoots. Everything starts with a morning trip to Michael's Craft Store for supplies and the set build + shoot happens in my living room. I'm not over complicating lighting (only two lights for this particular shot)...just shooting what light sets the right mood, while still demonstrating the extreme quality of craftsmanship that goes into these pieces. More of these soon but for now please enjoy some behind the scenes photos.

PS. Due to popular demand..my recipe for the artificial dung ball: Microwave one Eat-More chocolate bar for about 20-30 seconds and then smear around a styrofoam sphere (available at any craft store). Mix additional sand+grass for different effects.

Erin assisting while I shoot additional plates.

Getting hungry on set.

No need for craft services when the prop itself is edible.

Yes... I am shooting on an ironing board. Power provided by Broncolor Grafit A4 RFS. Rim light is a Pulso Spot 4. Key light is a Pulso G2 through a gridded snoot. Warmed up the Pulso Spot 4 with a CTO gel and subdued the G2 with some neutral density gel to maintain the necessary shallow depth of field.

Personal Work - Gas Planet

The ideas for the visual in this shoot came to me after I fell asleep watching Who Killed the Electric Car? I was thinking about the seemingly never ending consumption of fossil fuels and how one could visually display the detrimental effect this consumption has on our planet. While still dreaming I was faced with this imagery. Although I encountered some roadblocks in the process of creating this "island", I feel that this is the most faithful representation of one of my dreams to date.

The base of the island constructed from styrofoam, cardboard, newspaper, and wooden doweling for support.

Paper-mache applied to the entire structure.

Working on road line spray stencil (unused in the final image)

Sizing the road..tight squeeze!

Applying dirt to the side of the road. The asphalt was made in two steps. First the top of the island was spray painted matte black. Elmer's glue was applied and black craft sand was poured on top of the glue. I found that this created the perfect texture but was ultimately too shiny to replicate asphalt. Another coat of matte black spray paint solved this dilemma.

This little ziplock is what I received when I ordered a set of modern gas pumps from an online model store. This is what had originally been advertised.

Some assembly required...

Polyester pillow filling spray-glued to a piece of foamcore to form the backdrop.

Collecting dirt and roots in a plastic shoebox always garners suspicious looks from passers-by

Setting up. The spray painted backdrop is affixed to a wall on wheels to allow for flexible composition.

Broncolor Grafit A4 RFS powering a Pulso G2 (with gelled dome modifier), as well as a Pulso 2 with gelled snoot.

The dome light had two gels taped to it. One to warm the colour temperature on the subject, and the other to lessen the amount of neutral light on the backdrop.

 

Video is available in HD here.

End Product.

Simply the Wurst.

Two patrons finish their drinks as the light from street lamps pours in through the windows onto Wurst's emblem.

Bad puns aside the Wurst is one of Calgary's most exciting new restaurants. On my first visit I was blown away by the attention to detail and the quality in ...well...everything. The interior is stunning. The dishes are authentic (Everything is authentic). The staff is friendly. This restaurant/beer hall is clearly a product of passion and I was inspired by that. I had to shoot this place and luckily my friend Calvin, who works at the Wurst, was able to put me in contact with Geoff Gobert. Geoff was nice enough to grant me access to their building to photograph for a night and I am truly grateful. =)

I could go on and on about the Wurst (and likely will in person) but for now I will get to the photos. I shot the majority of the images on the large format Horseman LE, with my Cambo WRS + Phase One P25+ serving as a backup. Only two of the final images ended up being digital (the header, and the close crop of a stein.) 

Calvin checking composition on the back of the Phase One P25+. Thanks for the help!

A Beer Stein in its locker. One of many.

Back dining room shot on Kodak 160NC. This painting is stunning... I struggled finding the proper exposure for this image as I was battling film reciprocity failure to find any details in the black oil of the painting. What was supposed to be a 30 second exposure took roughly 6 and a half minutes. Although none of the people in the frame minded having their photograph taken, it was essentially a non-issue as I had planned to obscure them with the dragging shutter anyways. (and I know about the one light bulb glaring..it was a miss match of intensity and color and I didn't have any matching extras on me. live and learn.)

The main dining room shot on Kodak 160VC. This is what you first see when you walk in to the Wurst. This shot dictated the time at which I had to shoot the set. Originally arriving at 8pm I waited for the sun to die down to start shooting and decided to wait for the upper floor to be completely empty before capturing this.

The stein lockers also shot on Kodak 160VC. You can rent lockers annually to store your favorite stein in. Not only is this convenient for the regulars, but it acts almost as a cultural study for common onlookers. If this isn't a conversation piece...I don't know what is.... Plus when you look these lockers combined with the barrels you could totally convince yourself that you are sailing on a viking/pirate ship. Bad-ass.

Personal Work

For those who don't already know.. some of my personal work that doesn't make it to the commercial blog/portfolio can be viewed on my Flickr.

The Californian "Double Take" Contact Sheet.

Originally this "contact sheet" was enormous in size. In fact it was too large to post online at 2.74gb. The roll of 35mm film previously seen here has now been rescanned with Klyment Tan's Aztek DPL-driven Howtek Scanmaster 4500 drum scanner and re-sized by myself for web purposes.

Earlier this summer I was handed a roll of Fuji Pro-Z 800. At this point in time Klyment Tan, Corey Thompson and I were shooting in the deserts of California and we had no clue that this roll was any different than any of the other unshot rolls of film sitting in Klyment's bag. This roll was processed roughly a day after the first day of Coachella 2011 (as seen in the bottom right corner of the contact sheet.) Excited to see photographs of the desert sunset I paid the extra five dollars to have digital copies burnt to CD when having the film processed at Walgreen's. 


Popping the CD in, I was immediately greeted with a photograph with both Stephen Pilby, owner of Lighttools and Lightrein, and Klyment shooting his JADE GREEN!~*~*!!* Toyo VX125. I couldn't help but laugh at the Lion King/Star Wars-esque image. As I continued to flick through the photographs I saw a visibly younger Corey flipping me the bird meshed with a Markins Q3 tripod ballhead. Handing over the laptop to Klyment he recognized the images from his 2010 trip to Cinec in Munich, Germany. His images were shot with a Leica M7 and Zeiss 35/2 Biogon, while my overlaid exposures were created with a Contax G1 and 45/2 Zeiss Planar...on April 13, 2011 (almost a year later). 


Although I was initially worried that I had ruined a roll of important images, I now feel that given the overall response to these photographs this "tainting" of the original roll has added something incredibly important to the way we view photographic collaboration. Since the processing of this roll Klyment and I have ordered 100 more rolls of film to experiment (purposely this time) with the creation of anonymous double exposures.

How To Make A Caveman.

One might think that a Caveman is produced when a Cave Mother and Cave Father love each other very much... but it is a far more complex procedure than that. For this reason I have documented my creation of a Caveman so that others might follow in my foot steps with ease.

Step 1.
Employ cheap labor to build the prop Cave-wheel.

Prop construction expert: Elliot P. David

Elliot's work space complete with cardboard, duct tape, and hot glue.

 

more after the break...

 

Los Angeles, Indio, Coachella, Salton Sea, Las Vegas Road Trip

The following are drug store scans of the 35mm film I shot during a trip to the USA with Klyment Tan, Corey Thompson, and Bry Acheson. I intend to eventually rescan and perform final edits on these photographs but for now I've decided to share them in their "rawest" state.

Salton Sea:

more after the break...