An Idea That keeps Coming Back To Me

This week I worked on a Single Shot Cinema image that was fairly fresh in mind. I didnt want to put it off for too long, although I did procrastinate it a bit because I knew it would take a while to 'refine the location' (ie: it was shot in a garage that needed about two hours of cleaning to get junk out of camera range) But other than the cleanup and sweep-down, it went very fast, and very smoothly. There is a really unusual aspect to it that I cant reveal until I get the final image worked up in Photoshop, since I dont want to "spoil it" for [all three] people that read this blog. But it's definitely atmospheric!
In any event, as I was "striking the set" I was once again struck with the realization that these Cinematic Style shots are great - and they let people "star" in an image that looks like a movie, and all that... yet there is another idea that keeps coming back to me. One that 'serves the greater society' in many ways. A direction I have not seen a huge number of photographers going in, and something that may very well prove to be a new horizon for my work. It just keeps recurring to me... So now, I am thinking I may just have to pursue it.....
So after a blog post that says very little, and does it pretty vaguely, right now I can clearly say - Stay tuned...This might be kinda big....

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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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