The Flash Mob Gallery Exhibition – Behind the Scenes

Last month I was lucky to be involved in a gallery exhibition with the amazing talents of Keith Melder, Morgana Creely and Christopher Smith. The exhibition was held at 100th Gallery in Prahran, I definitely recommend you get on down there and check out the exhibitions, there’s amazing new stuff showing all the time!! A small snippet of my part in the exhibition is still listed on the 100th Gallery site. Read on for more info and some BTS images (and be warned, there are nudes in there!!)

For the exhibition I basically did 4 set-ups – a prop (plinth and egg couch), a reflective black set, a high key white set, and a “warehouse/industrial” set. This post includes a few examples, and you can find more images from the shoots in the “Nudes” gallery. The two sets that seemed to perplex people the most were the reflective black and high key sets, so I thought I would do a post on how they were designed and built.

The Black Reflective Set
The goal of this set was to shoot a nude in a space that allowed 3 perspectives of the model, which turned out to be significantly more difficult than any of the nude shoots I’ve done before. I personally find nudes more difficult to light and compose than fashion or beauty – the images are unforgiving, the lighting needs to be right, the shoot pressure is higher, the comfort of the model is paramount. Fashion or beauty shoots are tough enough, nudes are an order of magnitude more involved, and are easier to really get wrong as a result!

But I digress – more work went into this shoot and setup than any other I had worked on before! The problem I had to solve was how to get 3 perspectives of the same model, in the same image – and don’t say “Photoshop”, it’s not a verb you know!! Those that know me are all too familiar with my simplistic view that if it’s possible to get it right in the camera, then the effort is worth it!! So I was in problem solving mode – shoot in a mirrored room? Shoot through glass sheets? Or perhaps that old product photography trick might work – black acrylic?

Fortunately ShutterClass Studios is located next door to an acrylic/perspex manufacturer, so I was in business!!

Setup happened over the course of two days. The “walls” are 2400x1200mm 4.5mm black acrylic, the floor is half that, and the white “light bar” down the centre is white (opal) acrylic bent into a C-Channel, with a strobe behind it. The acrylic walls were attached to framing timber and fitted with hooks – then the whole thing was suspended from a backdrop stand kit (blue rope) and then further supporting from the roof truss (orange strap). Sound like fun? It wasn’t – it was heavy, and I was working by myself!! But I am pretty pleased with the result!

The High-Key White Set
The challenge with this setup was making a high key situation that was going to provide the right kind of light for the surrounds/walls, but not be so bright to ruin the light on the model. Full length high key is a challenge due to fall-off and reflections, particularly since I wanted the walls close to the model. After a number of scale tests using softboxes to simulate the walls, it became clear that the best way to get the look I wanted was to basically make very large softboxes, out of acrylic sheet! And so the softbox room was born!

Using a similar system to the reflective black setup, white acrylic sheets were hoisted up to the roof and formed the walls of the high key “room”. Using large acrylic sheets allowed full length high key shooting using only a single light on either side of the model. Of course, similar to the reflective setup, this stuff is heavy – so pulleys and roof suspension was required!

For the Photoshop fans out there, this one would have been easy to do in post. Lift the model out of a background of any kind (green?) and plonk her into a new white virtual world! Too easy! And you’d be right – but I personally believe they never look quite genuine enough! It’s not the Photoshop work, that’s always great. It’s the models, they often don’t have that “I’m really doing this here” aura. Movie makers have known this for a long time – for CGI work, they have masks on sticks, and go to great lengths to get the actors behaving like there is true interaction. Photography is the same, and Photoshop can’t easily replace that.

I like to give the models a real environment, tactile elements they can work and interact with – model’s facial expressions and body positions are derived from the space they are in. They work better when they can interact with their surroundings, when they can see the lights and can see the components that make up the end result. Some people may think my approach is overkill, but I (perhaps mistakenly) believe that a great image is a lot more than just the pieces that can be bolted together in Photoshop. Not that I’m saying I take a great photo – I was really pleased with the results of this project, and proud to see my work on the wall in a gallery! But I was already thinking of improvements during and after the shoots completed – always a better idea on the horizon!

What’s Next?
It took quit a bit of planning, building and experimenting to get the project completed, and I believe it was worth doing all the hard work to get a good result in camera. Editing didn’t take long, the images looked great on the metallic paper I chose for the gallery, and I received quite a bit of positive feedback. But it now means I have more ideas for the use of acrylic in shoots, and I now know how to approach building these kinds of setups safely and pretty quickly.

Next projects will involve more building for sure, just have to keep the size under control! I’ve not quite reached the scope of the sets built by Aaron Hawkes or Gregory Crewdson! One day, one day….