I’ve been creating imagery for 5 years now, and I still don’t know how to make industry standard photos. There’s been a lot of
intro
blank roles, cheesy concepts, bad lighting and botched quality, and yet with the money and time I’ve spent, the world of young creatives seems to be rolling out analoge perfection, something that they always seem a little to private to discuss. So i’ve created this series of imagery showing the processes and failures needed to create the single money-shot, like an ode to my personal improfessionalism and imperfectionism. By sharing these, maybe the reader will be spared the time and money, and feel a little better about the processes they have to go to to finally get an image they feel happy with.
Take care of your negatives after you’ve developed them. They may get scratched.
Bleach on 120mm black and white film after developingrolled up and dunked
FILM SOUP
Changing the chemistry of your film can completely change your results, with film being a delicate emulsion you can use pretty much anything to change your image, that is if you have a lot of time, money, paitience and private developing room. However, anything you believe to be chemically odd, from cocktails to spicey food, will individually have completely different results, and ultimately, pushes your images stylistically, and capture an image in a more surreal setting.
beauty photos
24 hours soaked, in freshly squeezed lemon juice from two lemons, mixed with boiling water, boiling water replaced every 12 hours.
beauty photos
24 hours in Tesco’s ownbrand disinfectant spray, unheated, shot on clean film, soaked after, made film impossible to remove from canister, so roll back in film in the dark to keep the tounge out
24 hours in Tesco’s own brand red wine, unheated
Dry your film The main lesson to take away from these experiments, is dry your film, for ages, keep going, when you think it’s dry it’s not keep going. Citris is sticky, so for the lemon juice, unroll in the dark and wash off the lemon, in the dark, then dry in the dark. Don’t be worried about the heat settings on your hair dryer, embrace them, from what i’ve learnt, heat doesn’t discolour your film towards red/ beige like it does with instant film. Heating film is similar to expired film, in that it doesn’t do too much besides lower the contrast and shadow depth, which if you like a light, and slightly dreamy look to your images, is the way to go. If you don’t dry and wash your film, i will get stuck inside the canister, so after a few shots, your camera will start cracking and before you know it, it’s ripped. The easiest film to work with was the red wine, which unlike the others, doesn’t particularly discolour the photo, more stains the edges, which reminds me of the trend of tie-dying and acid washing in 2012, so not to my personal taste. I think that this style is really unique when used with double exposure, to end up with an image that couldn’t be made in photoshop.
shutter speeds/ double exposures
shutter speed/ doubble exposures
Filters
These images, along side being a running rolls of failures and blurs, also got stuck to the paper they were stored in due to the humidity of my bag, so again I’ll say
keep your film safe,
because if you get something stuck to it, you can’t strub it off, or risk ruining your image. These photos were taken on a dull day, in between the rain, skies were a contast grey, which is very apparent in the images. The atmostphere when shooting in water is really reliant on the light surrounding, especially the colour of the pool itself. This pool had dark blue tiles, making the water itself dark blue. Other reasons why your surroundings could look dark than they were, could be the use of flash. Using flash will always make the surroundings on the model/object darker, because the aperture will focus on the artificual lit model, therefore artificially dimming the areas not affected the flash. I shot this on a compact 35mm camera with water proof plastic casing, something I bought online for 99p. Whilst these kind of cameras have no difference on the quality of your image, as that relies on the size and quality of film first, they do often take a cheaper route for placing the view finder a few inches away from the real lense. For general photos this won’t be too much of a problem, but when trying to take specific photos, like the one to the left, this becomes an issue. I will add that shooting with water offers a lot of fun possibilities, being able to expose certain parts of the body, or work with the way water distorts and ripples lights can really add something more to a simple image. You can shoot from under the model, or float a certain part of a model, just remember goggles and you’ll be okay.
Water is really unpredictable, even though this pool was a lot lighter than the pracise run I had in the private lido, it was a lot more murky, so you hardely see anything unless it was really close. Whilst there are a few shots where I like this distrortion of blue, i would have really liked to have got a shot half under water and half above water, which I still wasn’t able to achieve,
Bring goggles and make sure your view finder is alligned with your lense Creating an image that’s half water and half open in really delicate and relies on having full vision on what your taking, something that is difficult if you’re using a compact film camera, that has a different view finder to lense, this also can be the reasons for finger prints leaking into the image. Something that was crucial to the styling of these images, was the golden reflector. On sunny days, a reflector can change everything about your image, not only are they a must outside to make your model pop, but using a golden reflector can bring back vintage connotations, as it was with golden reflectors that photographers would give models a glow before photoshop. The best thing to come from this shoot was the polaroid, which reflects the sparkle on the water combined with the reflection from the golden reflector, giving the image a dream like colour palette, with extra focus on the model.
Instant film
instant film
caitlyn photos
caitlyn
swimming moodboard
description
Colour Gels
swimming tests
Using coloured gels are a great way to expression or aesthetic to your image. However in this age of digital media, the effect of this is downplayed a bti by the fact you can add this in in post-production. Whilst I think that shooting through colour gels directly creates a more natural colour palette compared to using colour tints on photoshop, I think there are more interesting things you can do with colour gels to create an image that would be difficult and stiff to create in photoshop.
Using colour gels on your flash creates a contrast in colours, isolating the model in one colour, whilst keeping the exterior it’s natural light. One extra thing to note, is the strength of colours. Red will always be strong if you get a strong acetate, but blues and yellows will be most likely washed out if you only use the one layer of acetate. This can be solved by just folding over the acetate over, maybe even three times for yellow.
swimming tests
still life flowers in dark
stil llife flwoers in dark 120mm
flash on film in the dark with coloured gels over the flash
final images of matilda
I’ve spent so much money on polaroids. The reason being mostly because instant film died in 2008, when polaroid gave up, losing pretty much all their formulas, and so when rebuilding with the ‘Impossible Project’ and eventually Polaroid in 2017 they had to re-invent all of their products. Meaning the products you get now, go out of date and get ruined very quickly. The company will tell you to that your rollers are dirty, you exposed too much light instantly, or didn’t store your film properly, but it’s most likely not that.
Always buy your film from Polaroid Originals.com
Do NOT buy from urban outfitters, argos, amazon and ebay. These companies don’t store the film properly, and keep it in stock for months. Buying straight from the website will buy directly from when it was made and, there’s no price difference. If you’re getting beige images with streaks through the middle, don’t give up, it’s not your fault, buy from polaroid’s website, maybe even try with black and white as I’ve never had any issues with streaks on with these. Most likely you will have a blur on the edges, this is unavoidable, so just enjoy it. Lastly, a confession, I’ve edited these images, a tiny bit, masking the image in photoshop to raise the contrast and lower the light, because the images were slightly exposed, I know it’s a shame to waste a polaroid, but,
always take a light test, and rememer your light meter with every shot.
CREATING SOFT LIGHT
Softening light and shadows to can have real effect on what images are communicating. In the 80s, soft portraiture would be often used with classical imagery like prom photos, or glam rock bands. It was popular due to it’s ‘angelic’ aesthetic, often paired with a ‘halo light’ directed at the model from the behind, which picks up and highlighs around the hair. This style creates a ethereal feeling, creating connotations that give the subject of the image more importance, along side the general flattering effect on the skin. This style is now made a come back with the new connotations of being reminiscent of 80s photography. Combining this technique with modern trends and ideas of beauty can create really interesting imagery, instantly feminizing the perception of the subject. The common practise for changing the softness of an image would be within the flash, the harsher the light (the more direct the flash) the harder the shadows and highlights. When shooting a flash directly, you can end up with a amature looking image with high contrast, however the more you difuse the light, be it with umbrellas, soft boxes, or bouncing light of walls, the softer the shadows become. In practise for my final shoot, I wanted to take this further by creating a soft filter for the camera.
My favourite technique of softening light is spreading a thin layer of vaseline over a clear filter for the camera. The thing I really liked about this test especially is how the light from the pink halo light dispursed over the whole image. On the image without the vaseline the pink gradients across, with a stronger pink on the left getting weaker the further along, and only tinting the left side of the model. However in the image with the vaseline filter, not only is the background a steady pale pink, but the pale pink creates a tint all over the image which i think really compliments the skin, and adds to the already feminine aesthetics of the soft portraiture. This technique also catches any reflective light, and spreads it out, flattering any ‘sparkles’ in the image. This is something that I also like about the technique, as it adds another level of slight distortion to an image. I also think this would really work with graduate Ella Llewellyn-Firth’s collection I’m hoping to shoot within this concept, which has a lot of draping beads. I think with the flash reflective on the beads, softening the light through the lense will really bring attention to the dynamics of Ella’s collection.
A good way to preview the image you’ll get on film, is to take a digital hooked up to the same lights and settings that your film camera is. A bad way to do this, is to not pay attention to your film camera’s preferences. Every manual camera will have a shutter speed that is highlighted in red. Make sure that you set your camera around this shutter speed or under, or less your shutter will be faster than your flash, only giving you half an
Long shutter speeds are a bit of a no no on the day to day without a tripod especially. However, in the studio, you can create a clear still image with the flash, then the rest of any movement will be stained upon that. The 60th of a second the flash goes on for will be the only thing in focus, but if you move slightly you can create a blur to these features, which can we fun to use to communicate more expression in an image.
Using a stocking
This stocking was too thick for this test, but generally this technique is really difficult to work with. I decided to give up on the stocking, especially as they seem to collect all the colour, which is why all these images are pink, (i had a small direct pink halo light that didn’t alter any of the rest of the image with out the stocking)
Light Flooding, a technique that can fill the whole of a background with one colour whilst keeping the model another. Achieved by creating an angle with two boardsm opening towards the background, whilst still shielding off light from the spilling foward. This could be really exciting when working with 2 or more colours as well, you could create a gradient in the background, whilst isolating the light from the model. I personally didn’t like this test, probably because of the fact I used Instax, which doesn’t really flatter more than just faces.
After trying a range of different techniques, stockings, double exposures, light flooding, and special effect lenses, I finally decided I didn’t want any of them. Which is okay. After playing around in the studio, I decided I wanted an ambient light, so decided to bounce my flashes of two white boards, this creates the illusion of a big window. I changed the amount of light I used constantly throughout the shoot, which is why a lot of the images have a different grain and colour to them, such as the images with a ‘bumpiness’ in grain within the black. This is actually where my flash didn’t go off at all, making the shadows really dark. When scanning the photos I pulled down the contrast and shadow depth, to get more defination in the face, which made a general two dimensional look, I think the contrast between the well lit images as distorted images is really beautiful, and I’m really happy with this result. Another element adding to the contrast between the images, would be that I kept swapping inbetween my vaseline lense and clear, making some of the images murky and soft, which I also think came out really well. Last but not least, I used to halo lights, so if you look critically at the photos, you can notice in a few. I choice green and pink to make the colour pallette of the garments, lighting from the behind sides, with a direct shade, to prevent colour spilling from anywhere other than the sides of the models. Colour gels are a little outdated now, but I think using natural lighting with gels as a subtle highlights, is a great way of keeping this technique fresh.
Alway’s write down the different shots you want, and look back to your moodboards and shot lists during shooting. There’s a lot of stuff I completely forgot to do when in the studio, try to help yourself as much as possible before the shoot, to keep yourself on track when overloaded with all the different things you want to achieve.