Month: June 2013

I usually go into a shoot with the concepts that I want to work around pretty much in mind. Often though when working with a model the two of us combine ideas and produce something different than the original plan, and usually to a better result. These photos arose from that. Orias and I were working on some images with her wearing black gloves and I noted an almost Venus De Milo effect when I moved to a low key lighting against a black background. We explored that concept and This led to the idea of playing up that using the fact that wearing flat black on this background and lighting left those parts invisible. We played with it a few different ways. First some shots with someone else draped in black behind her and out of the light. The result is the other person isn’t visible and where his body overlays hers you get an almost cut out effect. The concept is actually pretty old. I believe it goes back to stage magic in the 1800’s if not earlier. In this first photo you can just see the arm to the right of the model.

In some other images we shifted a bit. Here you can see how her arms disappear where she’s wearing the gloves while only the non black covered arms of the other person are visible. I’d prefer an assistant to stand in as the shadow here, but without one I had to improvise and work on both sides of the camera. Needles to say, this requires a very professional approach and a lot of trust between model and photographer given the contact involved. I’m wearing black pants, a black shirt, and a black ski mask pulled down. Even a slight sliver of skin showed up in photos and in one of these I did have to clone out a small element of my neck that peeked out during the shot. The camera is mounted on a tripod. A wireless remote allowed triggering of the camera and a delayed timer on the camera allows the shot to be triggered and then to finish posing.

An interesting set of images and while not something I’d do everyday or even that often, I think they came out well.