Entitled to Title?

For me, part of the fun of sitting in that darkened multiplex has always been in waiting to see the title of the feature presentation appear on screen. From the visually arresting intro of any given James Bond film, to the three hour wait before those plain white letters labeled the last shot of Inception, the titles have a certain magical quality to them. An aura that is part of the movie-going experience.
           So, that having been said, I have been toying with the question of whether "Single Shot Cinema" images should contain titles; and if so, where? After all, the whole idea is to mimic the feel and texture of a motion picture, using a single photograph. So why not have titles? The key is not to have them overpower the image. Locating them in the bottom corners, or in the letterbox margin seems to be the most logical solution, for the most part.
          I am also thinking that they should show some creativity - much like any photograph title. A shot of a man walking down W. 57th Street should not be titled: "Some Guy Walking Down The Street," but should have some aspect of cinematic creativity to it. "Another Agenda" or some other such enigmatic, 'movie-sounding' title.
           Will it work? Will it add to the images? Make them feel like one-shot cinema? Time will tell. Stay tuned....

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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.

The Light on The Street is...

I love night photography. Something about a photograph made at night embodies the Cinematic. Traditional still portrait photos are shot in airy, well lit studios. Movies have night scenes on location. I want my images to look like movies. For me, that often comes down to creating the look of night, rather than capturing it using only whatever light is available and adjusting the camera accordingly. Over the last few years, I have noticed a number of films where much of the action takes place in a night-scape lit by the orange/amber glow of sodium streetlights. While I had never been a fan of that light in real life, I decided to try my hand at creating the look for a photo project. Since using real sodium streetlights would mean either a very high (and grainy) ISO, or long, long, long shutter speeds, I determined pretty early on that I would be using flash. I will spare you all of the technical details of why using flash to repli...

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!

C. M. Franke | Photography

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