Belgian gangster invades Holland
Yesterday I spent the day at the Libre dance studio to photograph Belgian artist Neville Marcinkowsky. Ever since watching the TV series 'Selfridges', I've wanted to shoot something with a turn-of-the century theme, and Neville was agreeable. Of course, I was thinking of the dignified employees and customers of the Selfridges department store and Neville was thinking 'Gangsters!', but I liked that idea also, so that's what we did.
I knew of a place that had an old-fashioned interior that could look about right even if it really wasn't from the right period, so I rented it for the afternoon. When we got there, we were surprised to see a kitchenette tucked in the back that appeared to be on an annual cleaning schedule, and we were nearing the end of the year. There were ashtrays with little mountains of cigarette butts piled in them, fallen stacks of pizza boxes, what looked like McDonald's secret sauce lying in discreet puddles on the floor, garbage bags filled to over-flowing, and more. To give it the right mood, Neville played jazz music on his YouTube.
I knew I wanted to shoot the kitchenette as soon as I saw it, but Neville was more dubious. He had on his nice suit, so I can't blame him for being skeptical. He was a good sport about it though. Once he knew I wanted a shot in there, he was as enthusiastic as he could be. There was a hammer lying on the counter near the sink, It looked like the kind of thing a gangster might use as a weapon, so I asked Neville to hold it menacingly. Then, while moving some of the litter around to make it more appealing, he said, 'look at this!' and pulled a lacy black brassiere out of some shadowy alcove filled with who-knows-what other things. The brassiere was perfect for the shot, because now we had a reason for the hammer.
We put the brassiere on the corner of a mini-fridge, but a stripe of shadow crossed it in a way I didn't like, so Neville opened the fridge and tucked a strap in the top and then shut the door. One thing I just remembered is that I think we forgot to put it away when we were done--hmm...
Because it was a kitchen, there had to be a huge knife lying around somewhere, and there was, so Neville grabbed that in his other hand. We also tried a kind of electric drill/sander, but it looked wrong so we stuck with the knife and hammer. Last came the cigar. Until we did it, it didn't seem like it should be so hard to have each hand holding a weapon and a burning cigar in his mouth, but there were two problems: 1) the matches wouldn't light and 2) with a knife in one hand and a hammer in the other, Neville couldn't easily take the cigar out of his mouth--and he isn't a smoker.
At first I tried shooting this from a position on top of a counter that looked in on the kitchen, but the angle was boring, so instead we moved all the disgusting trash out of the alcove it was sitting in underneath the counter and I crouched in there instead, giving me the angle we needed to make Neville look more threatening. I had to be very careful while in there not to step in or sit on any of the blobs of still wet 'special sauce' I had arrayed around me.
A last note on this photo is that Neville had made a special request that we shoot in black and white. Because I was shooting tethered with CaptureOne software, this was easy to do. I just took one shot and then enabled black and white. After that, every shot I took was immediately converted into black and white as soon as I took it (without losing the color information), giving us instant feedback on how they looked.
Neville also wanted a dramatic black and white headshot like some portraits he showed me of the actor Jeff Bridges and the director David Lynch. For these, I intended to use a single light source with a beauty dish mounted on the light, but by the time we packed to go to the studio, it hadn't yet arrived. However, just as we finished the knife-wielding gangster shot, my wife called to say the dish had arrived. Neville kindly drove out to get it, so we were able to use it for the rest of the shoot. The nice thing about this type of light shaper is that it blocks the direct pulse of light from the flash, instead reflecting it back into the dish, which is shaped in such a way as to get a strong soft light that concentrates shadows on the edge of the subject. I hadn't bought one of these earlier because it isn't very portable, but knew it was an essential piece of lighting gear, so I finally picked one up.
The studio we were in had a hallway constructed to look like it was an exterior. This is where we shot another series of head shots (below):
For this shot, I put a strong light outside the window set to nearly maximum intensity. Inside the hallway, I used the same kind of light--a ProFoto B1 unit--with the beauty dish. This light was set to a low intensity so that it wouldn't overpower the other flash outside. One thing about shooting tethered in dark lighting like this hallway is that images always look brighter than they are on the laptop. This is why it is important to keep an eye on the histogram. I normally do this, but forgot to for this group so I had to raise the exposure a couple of stops to get this to look right after I got home.
This is the first shot of the day. At the time it was taken, I planned on getting rid of the signs on the wall in Photoshop, but after seeing the finished image, decided to let them stay. This is Neville's 'captain of industry' look.
For the last shot, we went over to the bar at the studio and tried out 'broke, drunk' and 'mobbed up' looks. I prefer 'mobbed up', but the drinking shot is nice also.
Thanks again Neville!
AP
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