The making of “Jurassic”

Believe it or not, the following picture was not made with Photoshop, in fact it was entirely made within the possibilities of my Nikon D700 and the creative usage of 2 flashes. Its part of the longer series “Jurassic” (some artistic nudity ahead!).

I had the original idea back in 2007 and even asked for advice in D1scussion, but it took me more than 2 years until I found the right model and location to actually realize this idea.

The idea was rather simple. I wanted a model to cast weird shadows on a wall until the shadows came alive and the model run away of the monsters she called. In the end the biggest task was to find a location where I can actually shoot this and where it has some kind of ambient context. And because this idea required some artistic nudity, I could not really shoot it somewhere in Tokyo.

Totally coincidentally I overheard a friend saying that her brother owns a private mountain in Chiba and I was all ears, made an appointment, checked the place out and ask him for permission to shoot my idea there. He agreed. The next task was to find the right model who was able to hold weird poses as required by the shadows and luckily I found Sanaxxx, who has a background in butoh dancing. Perfect!

The technical part however was a bit tricky. Since I wanted to shoot at daytime but have a visible shadow behind the model, I could not really use a battery powered lamp, I needed a flash. With some testing, I realized that the flashes don’t really cast a harsh shadow because of the size of the light by itself. Inventive as I am I came up with an idea and my first test shot with my lovely wife and assistant turned out well.

What I did was a good and a bad idea at the same time. The good part was that it worked. The bad that I basically trashed the fresnel lens on top of my flash, because it has now some burn marks on it. It still works though, but you better come up with a better idea in case you want to try this out for yourself (the pictures of the flash were taken only for this “making of” and after the damage was done, I never thought of making a documentary before the shooting).

I used a metal washer and some tape to turn my Nikon SB-800 flash into a light source with a small, round opening to create a harsh shadow.

More tape was needed to cover the entire surface of the flash. Be careful, the flash gets hot when it flashes, so it’s a safe way to lose your investment just to get some cool photos.

Now all I needed was some additional models …

… and a quick test with the modeling flash showed that it worked as advertised.

A quick lighting diagram reveals the trick. I needed 2 flashes, one unmodified but snooted one lights the model while the modified flash will be hidden behind a rock and lights the other, ca. 15cm tall model monster. In theory this works just fine.

In these kind of shootings I always use my camera all manual and fire the flashes with attached Pocket Wizards. The final look was achieved with the so called “Picture Controls” on my Nikon D700, I dialed some more saturation and contrast into the camera and switched the color balance to the “shade” setting, which creates the warm, saturated look of the final photos. The higher contrast was also necessary to hide one shadow in the other. My first test shoot with my lovely and fearless wife and assistant looked almost perfect from the beginning, except I didn’t got the angle right, but it makes for a good “making of” picture. On the right you can see the magnification of the monster model lit by the modified flash.

From my assistants perspective, it looked like this.

And a low-contrast sample reveals that the models real shadow was hidden inside the monster shadow. This worked only because of the correct “realistic” angle of the flashes to each other and the fact that the second, modified flash was closer to the wall and had more power than the flash which was only lighting the model.

If you don’t mind some artistic nudity, the full series can be seen here.

Finally a group photo of the protagonists …

… and the front of my modified flash, which now has some brown burn marks as a permanent reminder of not to stick washers and tape on your flash. You better don’t try this at home!