Meet Annissë, a Quorra cosplayer. Back in December 2010, I stumbled across her photo randomly online and posted on my Facebook wall. I guessed she must be from the Midwest or the South but I was far off. In fact, she lives here in Los Angeles. Within a few hours of posting her photo, she posted a comment. One thing lead to another, a photo shoot was proposed - then I had to leave for Texas for Christmas, then her suit's electrical system needed to be repaired and finally the first week of Feb we managed to meet up.
Video and more photos + explantations after the jump
So first things first we thought about the locations. My first thought was downtown LA is epic at night and I came up with a few locations. First is the Second Street Tunnel - probably a very well-known location for ads, TV shows, movies, music videos and so forth. Part of Blade Runner was shot here as well as Terminator. In fact, Ke$ha "We R Who We R" music video was shot here just in Oct 2010
So here's the nitty gritty. The light inside the tunnel tends towards the green - from the color temperature of the artificial lights installed there so it definitely works for the Tron look. To our eyes, the green is not as intense as it seems on cameras - our eyes compensate for that.
The shot is tripod at close to 1 second exposure at f/22. ISO is about 1600. Now with a one second exposure, if you move any light source, it'll create a light trail so I had Annissë swoosh her disc at different speeds and angles. To make sure we can see her face just fine, the strobe with a grid aimed at her head to capture in a flash. Camera setting is to tungsten to give an extra blue to her face.
We practice the shots many, many times to pull it off right.
The next location was under Grand Street - yet another heavily used location for movies, tv shows, music videos, etc. Die Hard 4,The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and so on. I haven't had a chance to go through all the images yet but above are two shots I did against the wall down there.
Now it looks photoshop but it really isn't. The blue tint is from adjusting the camera setting to tungsten. The strobe's color temperature is that of sunlight so using a tungsten setting will cause the image to look blueish. The cool fall-off of the shadows is because I used a grid on a beauty dish. Again, this is the same lighting set-up I used for the book. Since these are made by Profoto, they are insanely expensive. If you have a camera store nearby, inquire if they have a rental dept and see if they carry Profoto. I rent mine locally here in Los Angeles. Other companies make beauty dishes so you don't have that get that name brand.
The pack I'm using is a Profoto Acute 600R - a battery-powered strobe pack. This is lighter and easier to carry than the Profoto 7B pack that I used for the book. Again, check your local camera stores to see if they rent Profotos and again, let me mention there are other battery packs out there such as Alien Bees, Hensels and Rangers.
Okay problems with the shoot. #1 it is difficult to get her lighted suit in the photo because, if you expose for that, her face goes darker and the background is darker. If you expose for her face, the light is less intense. So here's what I'm thinking. I can try a snoot next time with a grid next time. A snoot allows you to directly focus the light so I can catch her face without blowing light anywhere else. The other idea is to somehow get a Kino-Flo and diffuse it with a Opal diffusion sheet and shape it with some black foil .....but I would need electricity and there's no power down there....oh, and I have to rent one also...
I know a lot of times people ask, what camera you use, what equipment you use. It doesn't matter. What matters is how you control and use the equipment. I know how it is in the beginning. I used to ask what camera, what exposure you set it on, etc, etc. Here's my personal thoughts about cameras. Canon and Nikon is Coke and Pepsi. Yes, there's Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke Zero as there is Rebel, 5D, 50D but in the end, it is a matter of personal choice. Here's a story. I know a photographer who has been shooting for 20 years. He's shot Oprah, Vanessa Williams, Beyonce, all the big names. You know what he shoots with ? A Sony SLR. Not a Canon, Nikon, Hassy, or Mamiya but a Sony. Oh, he also showed up at my book release party and I was like a fan boy - I've known his work for a decade and seen his work numerous times in magazine - the fact he showed up and bought a copy of my book is such a surreal moment in my life. The photographer who shot Beyonce asking me questions about the book, whoa.
I'll be working on the rest of the images later this week but if y'all have questions about the set-up or about the photography business, I'll be happy to answer them : cosplayinamerica@gmail.com - I will try to answer each and every question as best and get back to you as fast I can.
