SINGLE SHOT CINEMA

Since I first got started in photography, I have had a fascination with creating portraits that bore what I liked to refer to as "Cinematic Style." I tried to incorporate lighting and camera angles used in Hollywood to create photos that looked less like traditonal portraits, and more like the client / subject had been photographed on the set of a blockbuster movie.
Now comes the next step in the development of this style: "Single Shot Cinema." Not just portraits that use movie techniques, but images that are stand-alone narratives themselves. Single image movies, for lack of a better euphamism. The concept of these shots is not just to capture the subject, but to incorporate them into a 'story.' A story that the viewer creates in their mind. Complete with titles and a treatment that dupicates the look of a movie shown on the silver screen at the multi-plex, Single Shot Cinema really does let me '...Put You in Pictures!'

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Playing With Dramatic Light

I have this image that keeps recurring in my mind. It involves the cold blue feeling of a dark winter and the glowing orange of a firelight. So far it seems to keep eluding me, although I think this is largely because every attempt I have made to capture this "mood" has been done in a hurry, or in the rain, or some other situation that forced me to run through it rather than walk it out. This shot is one such version. I may need to go back with a slightly different lighting setup and try some more. Perhaps in a different location.

It's Not The Light, Its What You Do With It.

Standard soft-light shot with umbrella Snoot light for that film-noir look T his past weekend I had the opportunity to shoot with a very talented East Coast makeup artist, and an amazing model (!) S ince I knew that I would be working in a relatively small space, and did not want to set up lots of plugged in lights, I used a Vivitar 285-HV speed light and bounce umbrella. Once we got the images we were after, but before we wrapped the shot and struck the set, I dropped a snoot on the light, swiveled it around, and tried my version of a "noir / vintage album cover" look. These are just quick samples of both styles, pretty much as they look straight from the camera. The refined, polished, edited versions will be coming up later - but it is nice to see that even a small and often overlooked "old-school" flash unit can still create pretty impressive light!

Turning Day Into Night

Shooting at night is like having a clean slate. A very challenging clean slate. Why do I say it that way? Because as far as the camera is concerned, there is nothing there. We may know there are houses, cars, or trees in that moonlit space around us - but without adjusting the ISO to extremely high (and usually noisy) levels, the camera sees a blank, black canvas. In order to make it come alive, we need to paint with light. In the world of big budget films, this means using huge amounts of lumens and wattage to create either a large wash of psuedo-moonlight, or pools of selective light shining on specific parts of the scene. Either way, it means having lots of lighting - and lots of power - at your disposal. Maybe. And maybe not... There is an age old trick that has been used by Hollywood for decades, and is even seen in large-budgeted modern films such as Jaws (1976), Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005) and Mad Max Fur...

C. M. Franke | Photography

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