The other day I was driving way out in the country looking for locations for upcoming shoots. I came over a hill and there, standing in the middle of a field, was a prison cell…I’m not kidding. I couldn’t believe it. What was a jail cell doing by itself in a field in the middle of nowhere? After finding the owner I realized he loved making things out of scrap metal, and in his collecting he found two parts to a maximum security prison cell. So he welded them together and added them to some other old machines he had in his field. This was a gold mine of locations, a jail cell with no one around and I could use to shoot in…I was giddy with excitement!
I returned with Chris, one of my favorite models to work with, and also someone who would be a perfect ‘prisoner’. All that was needed was a little lighting magic.
We tried lots of different lighting, gel and fog set ups. I liked a lot of them, but I really like the shadows in the top shot, and the gelled lights in the other image. Critical for effect in all the shots was a Rosco 1700 fog machine. This thing cranks out enough fog to get the fire department’s attention! The top image was lit with two Elinchrom Quadras. One light with standard reflector was to the left lighting Chris and adding shadows to the wall. A second blue gelled light hit the back wall and fog. The other image had two Quadras and one Ranger. One Quadra was shot through an overhead gridded square Rotalux softbox (held on a boom arm). The second Quadra shot into the smoke behind Chris with a blue gel attached. The Ranger triggered an A head shot through a 20 grid and red gel through the door window. This light was hidden behind the door. All lights were triggered by the Elinchrom wireless Skyport system. Tech: Nikon D3, 24-70mm, 1/200 at F13, ISO 200.
I was recently in Arches National Park, and they have had a lot of snow and rain this spring. Rain can produce some interesting things to photograph in the desert including rainbows and reflection pools on the slickrock. But what I hadn’t seen before was a bright red waterfall. This little stream in the park only runs after a shower, but this time it was running really strong and bright orange due to the sediment in the water. I’ve seen some murky creeks after storms before, but this stream really had strong color. Despite the rain I set up with a rain cover on my camera, and used the Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter to get a slow shutter speed. This filter blocks from 2-8 stops of light, and is a great way to reduce light and produce slow shutter speeds in the middle of the day. Speeds up 30 seconds are possible even with sun. Tech: Nikon D3, 24-70mm, 13 seconds at F11, ISO 200.
