ONE HOT LIGHT

When I first saw Theresa’s face, I knew I had to capture it. Fast forward to a week later and she was sitting in my studio. That Friday was a long day, I had shot for 8 hours for Louisville Magazine and raced to my studio to find Theresa and my team, consisting of makeup artist Casey Ritchie and stylist Jamie Hubbard, ready to rock. The hard work of the day was well worth it. The concept concentrated on androgyny, blending the lines of male and female fashion. I won’t dive into the logistics of the shoot or any pre-production, but rather the technical aspects. 

The first set, I lit Theresa with one stobe pulled back 10 feet and raised 12 feet to mimic hard sunlight. The lighting diagram can be seen below and is explained in this Fstoppers post here.

The second set, we got creative. I wanted to do something very dramatic with my new Oliphant backdrop, but I also wanted to shoot at a very shallow depth of field, almost like a celebrity portrait. I fired off strobes and tried several lighting techniques, but I just wasn’t getting what I wanted, I made a quick executive decision to lock in my 50mm prime lens and open up my aperture to f/1.2. Then, I proceeded to only use the modeling light on the strobe. The light was harder than I wanted, so I clamped a Westcott Diffusion Panel to the Paul C Buff Octobox and what came of it was a beautiful triple diffused light source. White balance was though to lock in, but once I had it, the results floored me.

A first time for everything; it was the first time I had done anything like that in the studio and it was all a big experimentation, but an experimentation that paid off.

QUITE THE COMPOSITE

As you may know, I had the amazing invite to join the Fstoppers team as a official staff writer. With that comes a lot of writing and potentially less personal posts. However, I plan to do my absolute best to save some of the more creative, unique content for this space. I’ve received a lot of amazing comments and feedback on some of my more recent work “Let Them Eat Wedding Cake” a feature editorial for February’s issue of NFocus Louisville Magazine. Much of that feedback was about the lighting and the entire aesthetic of the shoot. The entire concept was a play off “Marie Antoinette” and the whimsical vintage world of that age. It required a lot of planning, but was well worth the pre-production.

But, it was the post-production that truley played a integral piece to the entire puzzle. Getting everything right in camera is an important part of photography, but processing and grading is what can really breathe a totally new life into an image.

On the first set, I was tasked with shooting all 3 models in a dark corner, there was some ambient light flowing in through windows camera right, but I realized that my lighting just wasn’t right. I made an executive decision to composite everything. Just like that, my mind set had totally changed for the shoot. The rest of the day was comprised of shooting all for the compsoite. Gaining the proper background images and making sure I had everything I needed to tackle some pretty detailed post-processing. 

Compositing; It’s a pretty simple process. Lighting and capturing each individual model, then snagging a couple of background images all on a tripod, all the same frame. Then, taking those images, combining them all in Adobe Photoshop and blending everything together. Perhaps easier said then done, but once you do if a few times, it turns into a pretty seamless workflow. I dive a little bit more into the technique in this video here. With strong deadlines, I usually have to farm out the initial masking and layering to my friend Chris Miske, who can usually knock them out in a day or two. Then I’ll take on the re-touching and color grading. 

Our last frame consisted of a beautiful tile wall that screamed “Antoinette”. We wanted the background, but unfortunately there was a giant mirror attached to the wall with massive bolts. It was throwing light everywhere, so to keep things clean and easier and post, I hung my Westcott Scrim Jim over the mirror and made sure to get a shot of a clean tile wall which was adjacent to the mirror.

“I enjoy the challenge of creating a single image from a series of photos. With this image the lighting from each image was blended to create a stark contrast of the foreground and background composing a faint silhouette around the subjects. On every project a challenge with this image the most difficult element of the photograph was replacing the decorative plaster moldings. It took several attempts with many different types of techniques finally ending upon the one seen in the photograph.” - Chris Miske

It’s never easy to look at the RAW images and gain a vision of the final image, many think “behind the scenes” but the RAW image is very much the birth of something greater. That final photograph is always in my head and when compositing it’s post processing that makes everything come to life. When the light just isn’t working and you’re up for the challenge, give it a shot. It’s well worth the process.

LIGHTING LUCY

For whatever reason, January has been plagued with cancelled and re-scheduled shoots. However, the silver lining; it has given me a grand opportunity to experiment and really test my skills in the studio. In other words, do something on my own terms for me and my portfolio. I’ve wanted to shoot Lucy for quite sometime and always had the vision in my head, when a commercial job decided to re-schedule I jumped at the chance and got a team together in less than 30 minutes. What I was so exciting was that the majority of the team had never worked together. It would be a melting pot of talent that had never been on the same set and I knew it would be a winning combination. With a strong vision of mod styling fused with retro art, I brought together Raina Trimble and her bold artistry with Jamie Hubbard’s commercial styling. And with Lucy’s gorgeous look, I knew we would walk away with some images we could all be proud of.

I won’t dive into details, but rather focus on the technical aspects of this image. I wasn’t sure how I would execute the style of lighting I wanted, all I knew it that I wanted dramatic, moody and… fog. We started with the basics, one soft key and one background light. The key light was modified with a Photek Softlighter II and the background light was modified with a 30° grid and several CTO gels for a strong warmth. From there we built. I needed the legs and hands lit, so we placed a soft box with a grid under the key light just for that pop and fill. Finally adding a low powered speedlight with a red gel to accent Lucy’s jacket. Once the lighting was locked we unleashed the fog and I started snapping the shutter. Right out of the gate I was extremely pleased with the lighting and the mood.

It all may seem overkill for a portrait like this, but I felt it was much needed for the results I wanted right out of camera. Some lights just play a small role, but without them the image may lose interest. Next time you have some creative time in the studio, start small and build, you never know what unique light you may find beyond “the key”.

Testing The Water

This one meant a lot to me. I’ve spent the better part of my career researching and looking into shooting underwater fashion and I’ve finally done it. Granted it was on a completely small scale. Last year I set a goal for myself, I would produce an underwater shoot on a large editorial scale sometime in 2013. Well, my goals have yet to be achieved, but it will happen. Steve Squall and I have set upon a journey, by the end of August we will be displaying some of our proudest work and we haven’t even shot it yet. But I’m confident the results will be something all will enamor.

To get to those results, we knew we had to “test the waters” and “get our feet wet”. Personal friend of mine, Hilary Vonderheide starting working with Gunnar Deatherage and I back in February as a styling assistant. Since then, she had tossed around the idea of modeling herself. Forming a full collaborative team for a fashion photo shoot isn’t easy and a simple test shoot, underwater, required none of that. So we figured this would be the perfect opportunity for Hilary and it just so happened she had access to a nice pool. We set a date and I began diving into research. I immediately found some information that perplexed me, radio triggers, designed to fire off camera flash do not work underwater. At all… “How the hell am I going to pull this off?" 

We knew we had to use flash. I’ve seen many photographers botch a beautiful fashion set because they didn’t do enough research or didn’t have the equipment to pull off a dramatic underwater session. I consulted with Hasselblad master and friend Joao Carlos about his amazing underwater fashion and gained some good advice from his behind the scenes videos. Although his underwater shoots are on a far bigger scale with the use of SCUBA, I gained a lot of practical influence. 

We had to fire our flashes optically. Using the master mode on a Canon 600EX-RT (on camera) and slaving the Canon 580EXII boomed above the water, I was hopeful we could use that combination to fire my Profoto D1’s which were to be set around and above the pool.

The day was hot and the sun was low, and I was stoked beyond belief to jump in and get wet. With the help of my intern Jenna, we cautiously placed the strobes around the pool in a coordinated arrangement which I had conjured up the day before on paper. Everything on full power. I quickly came to the realization that if a strobe feel into the pool, we would all be electrocuted, so I made sure all the stands were weighted down with stones and sandbags. After all the setup, I was still a nervous wreck, not only for safety reasons, but I would’ve hated to see some really really expensive gear trashed because of water. I pushed those thoughts aside and muscled toward the task at hand.

I carefully placed my camera in the housing bag and locked everything tight. I double checked my gear and coolly walked into the water and submerged the camera. It was air tight. But, the camera floated, it wasn’t easy to sink and the housing breached the top of the water like a balloon every time I plunged it under. Fortunately, I had researched this and had bought 30 pounds of kettle bells which I strapped to the bottom of the housing. It sunk like a rock, so I compensated and found a good balance. I fired off a few test shots under the boomed speedlight and everything was working properly and all the strobes were firing. I felt like I had just won the lottery.

Hilary was ready to rock and I gave her a quick 5 minute run down of what we would be doing and how I’d like her to pose under the water. This was her first time EVER "posing” in front of the camera, I felt bad and knew she was nervous, but it couldn’t of been a better situation for us. Steve, Hilary and I were all new to this, at the same playing level. I tightened and positioned my cheap set goggles and I submerged with Hilary. 

I blew out all my air and sunk to the bottom, I placed my face to the housing and what I saw was a blurred figured and no focus points. I guessed composition and pressed the shutter repeatedly. When I rose above the surface and took a glance at the LCD, what I found was very interesting, but very disappointing. I felt as if all the research had been in vein. It looked like a pool without strobes, mid-day, out of focus and horridly composed. How do you get all that drama?

“Throw out everything you’ve learned about photography, because this is an entirely different ball game." 

I tweaked my settings and submerged once again, over and over. The strobes were inconsistent, for every 5 shots I snapped the strobes had fired twice. It was frustrating. I handed the camera off to Steve, who I could tell was itching to get in front of the rig and give it a shot. During his set, I concentrated on the erratic flash and what we were doing wrong. I came to the realization of two eye opening issues; despite shooting at f/16 - f/22 the sun was still too high and increased the ambient blue hue of the pool. Water acts as a natural diffuser, when powerful light hits the pool from afar, it doesn’t penetrate, it spreads and lightens the ambiance underneath the surface.

We took a break and I re-organized. This time around we popped the on camera flash forward to give the "good ole’ straight on speedlight” a run through. This was a lot easier, our light consistently fired and we had a better grasp on underwater composition. However, we still couldn’t see anything through the viewfinder and we certainly couldn’t depend on auto-focus. After I completed a set, Steve took the reigns and really got creative, working under Hilary and above her. The results we’re pretty cool, it was fairly dramatic and had a hint of high-fashion, but we really wanted to get the ethereal backlight look to these shots.

Taking in what I had learned earlier, we waited until the sun moved behind the house and covered the pool in complete shade. I asked Steve to hold ONE Profoto directly above the surface, 5 inches from water. I snapped a few shots and rose to find immediate progress. The one dramatic backlight poured through the pool providing the shadows and contrast we needed.

Using this knowledge, we setup one boom and one light directly over Hilary’s head, 10 inches above the water. Steve and I traded off sets and really started to find ways to make things work. Hilary was a real trooper and performed beautifully. It amazed me having never modeled in her life; some of the lines she formed and what she did under water. That is no easy feat. We threw her into the wolves and she conquered, prevailing when many would completely crumble under the pressure.

From a photography standpoint, I felt overwhelmed as we wrapped the shoot. I didn’t know what I would find when I imported the images and was unsure if we had nailed anything good. But, the one thing I do know, we learned what NOT to do and we walked away confident to take on the real deal.

If your going to take on an independent low budget underwater shoot this summer, please heed this advice…

• Shoot wide. Our model looked like a blob the entire time through the viewfinder, it’s not easy to compose properly. Most of our shots were taken at 18mm - 30mm. We cropped in from there.
• Shoot a lot. Steve and I are professionals. We know how to compose and focus. But, we took over 400 frames and only came out with a small handful of usable images.
• Safety first. You could die. Have an assistant above water, holding stands as well as use sand bags, weight everything down. You’ll save a lot of personal anxiety and will have a relaxed crew for a better, more fun experience.
• Prepare your time. You’ll need it, everything moves slower underwater and it sucks the energy right out of you. Around the time you’d normally be hitting your stride, your model will be exhausted and out of breath, ready to call it a day. Get your model in the water only when your ready to go.
• Proper equipment. Invest in your shoot and purchase the right underwater gear, including kettle bells, flippers, snorkel and most importantly goggles. I think our biggest fault was not having a professional pair of SCUBA goggles. Unfortunately, we had a cheap set from Wal-Mart that simply didn’t do the trick.
• Tweak your camera diopter. Because the your eye sight may distort when shooting underwater through goggles, a housing, then your viewfinder; tweak your diopter under the water before you start shooting. I think this may of been a large issue with not seeing anything but a waving blob.   
• Flash close. Because the pool water acts as one giant diffuser, the closer your flash is to the subject the more dramatically it will penetrate the water. Unless you want the flat look, boom that strobe.
• Shoot indoors or at dusk. Use an environment where you can completely control your ambient light. The less sun you have to deal with the more dramatic an image you’ll be able to capture. Use high wattage hot lights for added drama and additional light for focus. 
• Focus first. While you and your model are treading water right before you dive under grab focus and maintain position and focal length to guarantee decent focus.

THROUGH THE EYES OF CLAY COOK:

THROUGH THE EYES OF STEVE SQUALL:

BEHIND THE SCENES:

Summer Sparks

It’s always a true pleasure and great opportunity to work with fashion designer and stylist Gunnar Deatherage. I’ve had the chance to work with him on many occasions now and we seem to constantly up our game. Fortunately, with Gunnar and NFocus Magazine, I have a space of creative freedom that I’ve pushed to the limits. This particular shoot was no exception.

When I think of July, I think warm weather, fireworks and that summer nostalgia. I really wanted to push my camera and step outside the box. I had been doing a lot of commercial work and I wanted to flex my creative muscles. I approached Gunnar with an idea; using a combination of sparklers and steel wool, I wanted to create portraits that “shined” through the pages. 

It’s called light painting. With digital camera trickery and a bright light source, you can create out of this world stunning imagery. Many photographers have mastered light painting, but none have mastered it with fashion and portraiture. It’s called “painting” because when you click that shutter open the rest is up to your creativity to “paint” whatever you want for the image to display, as long as your tool creates a strong light source. In this case we chose sparklers and steel wool.

I’m constantly finding ways to set myself up for failure and this shoot could have certainly gone down hill quick. Inspiring from photographers like Aaron Nace and Brett Jarnigan, I took what I what I had learned and dove in head first, trial by fire. It was certainly one of the most challenging photoshoots I’ve ever taken on. You just don’t get instant results as most shoots. Light painting takes practice and time, with this style of photography the “3rd time MIGHT be a charm”. It’s all a gamble.

Being my worst critic, I can’t say I’m 100% confident in the work, I feel like I could fill a page on the imperfections, but at the end of the day, its art. It’s the imperfections that make the images stand out. Despite my own fuss, I’m proud of the creativity we put forth, it’s not everyday you push yourself and the entire team out of a comfort zone.

LIGHTING, RE-TOUCH, PROCESS

Many photographers may hide their techniques as secrets or publish them in paid tutorials or reading materials. Everything I know, I learned for absolutely free, but I’ve learned with a lot of patience and hard work. I’ve soaked everything in like a sponge and then used it to form my own process. This may not be the process or setup for you, but I know it works.

This set was for Z Salon & Spa, a local salon that has a great marketing strategy. When they asked me to shoot some images for an updated look, I gladly obliged. 95% of the models on set that day had never modeled, which was fine, but it definitely struck a challenge especially with beauty shots. The biggest obstacle was to shake the nerves and get the models comfortable in their space. First up, a striking young model, Abigail Taylor. She was nervous, but I cracked a few jokes and she seemed to immediately carry on. She had never stepped in front of the camera before, but by the end of the day I was handing her a business card for more work down the road. We managed to nail the shot below within 15 minutes of her stepping in front of the lens and it turned out to be my favorite from all the images we snapped.

My techniques aren’t all that complicated.

I wanted the red of her hair to really explode off the white backdrop and the shape of her jaw line and shoulders to really have the angelic sense. So I setup two lights on the background at full power for a real backlight blow. The with the addition of the soft hair light overhead and the heavy white beauty dish everything came together at once. The silver reflector right under the chin completed the puzzle with a perfect glamour fill.

My re-touch and post process is over viewed in the video below. While you can see the difference between the SOOC(Straight Out Of Camera) shot and the processed image, it isn’t all that crazy. It always feels good to get it right in camera and that’s exactly what was done here. The post work is simply the icing on the cake.

Remember if you have any questions, feel free to comment below or shoot me an email info@clayccokphotography.com

PEG BOARD CHALLENGE

Many of my blog posts start of with philosophical statements or they dive right into a backstory, but this time around I’ll be breaking the trail and venturing into technical details. If your not a striving professional photographer, then this post probably won’t keep your interest.

The shoot came out of left field. A student from Manual High School, Meg, touched base with me about doing a photo journalism project on my photography. I was both flattered and delighted. I immediately started planning a shoot that would fit within Meg’s deadline. Several days later, we had a shoot booked and plans in place. I took the opportunity of a fashion forward shoot to experiment and try some new lighting techniques that had been on the back of my mind. Several months ago, I happened on a photograph in which the photographer used industrial peg board to build a set and shoot light through the holes. The images were pretty poor, but the idea was definitely there. I wanted to take the idea, put it in the realm of fashion photography and expand on it.

I stopped by Home Depot and stumbled onto 3 decent size peg board sheets. I knew I needed something large but also mobile. So, I decided to create a 3 piece section using hinges, so I could fold it to fit in my car. The construction took every bit of 3 hours to piece together, but once the assembly was complete, my confidence was raised.

Day of the shoot. The models arrived and styling began immediately. Meg showed up and I made introductions then started working on my setup. I kept my cool, but was slightly frantic. Everything was improvised, first thing was first; I didn’t exactly know how I would hang the peg board to cover the 3 quarter portion of the models body. So, I went to the first thing that came to my brain, duct tape. Fortunately, Josh had some white duct tape laying around. I setup a background set and duct tape the center sheet to the horizontal bar. Then set up stands on the corners to hold the remaining weight.

I knew I needed to shoot light through the board, so I started with bare bulb Alien Bee B800 strobes bouncing of the parallel walls for a wide span of light. First test shot, nothing. The light simply wasn't wide enough to pour light through every hole and not nearly powerful enough. So I turned the lights around directly to the back of the board, it worked, but I only had a 14 inch diameter of spotlight coming through. So I started messing with modifiers to cover a greater area.

An hour into hair/makeup I was still locking in light. I had finally landed on a large Octobox and small softbox to cover the right side of the peg board, this would be my main source of lighting. Behind the center sheet and left sheet I placed two large stripboxes for fill. 

My next challenge was key light. I messed with grids, bare bulbs and even beauty dishes in front of the boards. Granted it was perfectly exposed and looked great, but it really washed out the back lighting and nothing was creating the drama I wanted. So, out of pure experimentation, I setup a 30-inch silver reflector in attempt to bounce all the back-lighting to the subject, just like that I had the drama I wanted. But there were still several issues…

Because of the shape of the octobox, the entire right side was peering out from behind the peg boad and created some nasty blow out highlights. So I taped a double thick white diffuser on the right side of the octobox to reduce the light and it worked perfectly.

After every bit of two hours messing with the power levels and diffusion of the strobes through the peg board, I had it tested and ready to go. Conveniently, as I locked in the lighting, the models were ready to rock. 

The first set, absolutely rocked. I gave myself a pat on the back and was proud of the setup. I knew it would require some slight post processing, but I was very happy with what I was seeing on my camera. By the second set, I knew I was forgetting something… fog. My original intent was to have the lights gleam through the peg board and have a mysterious aura about them with fog rising from below. Instead, I got a much better result. A consistent washed out look that couldn’t be done with post processing. The fog acted as a natural diffuser that played in my favor.

This what I was seeing on the back of my camera. This shot is 100% straight out of camera with ZERO editing:

As we blazed through sets, I began experimenting with the position of the stripboxes and changed it up many times. However, the bulk of the final images used the exact setup throughout. The styling really played a crucial role in the look of the images. I’m so happy with the team we had that day, the images shined because of everyone’s part in the shoot. I think Meg walked away with a fun understanding of how we spend our days with lights, models and makeup.

We closed the evening with another set in which I solely used two lights with stripboxes. A true experimentation, but that’s for another day.

I use shoots like this to both challenge myself as a photographer and also to find new unique ways to use artificial lighting. Many photographers get stuck using the standard 3 light setup and get wrapped up in client work to much to have fun. I’ve learned to step away and use opportunities like this to step outside the box.

Everything was captured on video by photographer and now videographer, Josh Eskridge. Check out the behind the scenes video below to grasp a bit more of the actual peg board challenge.