trying to find a time when both of us were free was difficult as we are both full times students, we had to plan around our lectures, and the studio time table which was limited to week days and closed at 5pm.
as this was our first time in the studio i wanted to make the most of our session, to do this i asked thom to bring a few props to the studio.
- his guitar
- a change of clothes
- his laptop and mini keyboard
- accessories
- his Tyler the creator shoes
while he was getting ready and on his way to the studio, i was setting things up so that we would be able to jump into things, making me look professional. i opted to use over head spot lights with soft box attachments, one was my key light and one acted as my fill light creating soft shadowed lighting, illuminating one side of my muse. for shooting i used a nikon D810 with a 36.3 MP, way higher than my personal nikon camera at 24.2. i also used a AF 50MM F/1.8D lens for up close portraits.
thom also opted to wear makeup and nail polish.
starting with a lighting test i asked thom to hold up the light meter to his nose to that this would be the focus for my metering.
first we started without props so that i could capture just his essence and to get him use to posing. i wanted to capture some of him on his side to exaggerate the lighting i had set up. i later introduced his guitar acting as something for thom to hide behind, allowing him to pose more comfortably
as thom isn’t the tallest of people i found myself bending over or crouching to be on eye level with him. later in the shoot i also used a step ladder to get higher angles amplifying his size. this created an interesting perspective. this exposed some of the studio backing meaning i probably couldn’t use these shots in editing without post production editing, however i still like the style and idea it conveys.
after a quick wardrobe change and another lighting test we started shooting again, now in black thoms clothing would adsorb more of the light meaning less would reflect back at the camera. knowing this and looking at previous photos i decided to increase the spot light brightness slightly so that they would still be even on both sides.
i wanted to start without props to begin with and slowly introduce them. now that thom was more use to being infront of the camera and starting to relax he started to get more creative with his posing.
one of my favourite shots is one where i asked him lay down, turning the camera landscape allowed me to get these vertical portraits.
we also tried some photos with thoms laptop as a lot of his music is sympathetically generated or sampled, making his computer in essence a instrument. i didnt want to introduce a table as this would obscure quite a bit of thom removing from his appearance, because of this we used the floor giving it a more relaxed atmosphere
during my studio lighting workshop with sam and john we got to use the snood attachment, i wanted to try something similar with the honeycomb attachment. for this i used one spot light focusing on thoms face highlighting him, and his make up and removing background noise. i really like how these turned out as theyre quite moody, thoms black attire helped with this as it blacked out his body.
here is a contact sheet i made using photoshop through bridge tools, this was really helpful to highlight key photos and composition, neatly visualising our work together, we discussed these together to help show which ones we liked and could agree on, i also let thom access this files through google drive so he could use these as assets in his work where he saw fit. i’ll edit these yet and pick out key photos.
Alex's Photos & Thoughts 