Alien abduction
Photography, Technique • Monday, 30th March, 2009
That was the idea, anyway. I’ve been inspired by Nick Turpin’s street shots, using high, undiffused strobes, and have been experimenting on and off with the technique. This is a shot from this evening in the woods near my home, which uses a single flashgun on a 3 metre stand out of shot to the left, pointing at me. I used a little more light to the shadows by using the pop-up flash on the camera, set at 1/8 power. By setting the white balance on the camera to tungsten – the usual for warm indoor lighting – and underexposing the grey sky, it went very blue. To counteract the effect of this colour shift in the flash (which would’ve been very bright blue with no adjustment), I added a warming (“CTO”) gel to the flash gun, thereby making the main light a neutral colour. Then, setting the camera on a tripod and using the remote shutter release on a five second timer, I jumped off the rocks around thirty times, until I got the timing just right. The only Photoshop work on the image is a slight dark vignette and crop.
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