04/8/14

Making of "Captivity"

In this one, I wanted to create an mood similar to a jail by projecting the light through something like “metal bars”.
I used a cutter and cardboard to create my bars and set a flash behind it on the right of the camera to project the shadows of the bars onto the composition.

I could have created shadows with a more defined borders by placing the flash farther from the cardboard, so that the relative size of the flash would be smaller, but for me it was ok this way, because it can be interpreted as an office curtain too, which I also found appropiate.

To emphasize the highlights and textures of my hand and give the impression that the person was in tension and sweating, I used a dropper with water to wet my hand. I used an old keyboard I had at home because by combining it with the b/w processing seemed more adequate to me than a modern keyboard.

Before:

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After:

04/1/14

Making of "Pens and Swords"

Today I’m going to start a little project about how I make some of my photos or build my light tools, usually using materials that can be found at home, because sometimes there’s no need to have an amazing studio to create decent photos. I won’t describe the details in each case, and the making of photos will probably be made with the smartphone, but feel free to ask if you have any doubts 😉

The idea was suggested by my friend and photographer Xavier Carol, check his blog if you want: lalquimista.com

For this first photo, I used a feather I found on the street. With a cutter, I carefully cutted the feather to the point I wanted, and then I placed a decoration sword I had at home inside the feather. I wanted a dark background but also emphasize the details of the sword and feather, so I used my computer screen and a polarizing filter in the lens, rotating the filter to a point where I saw a black background.

With some exposure time, I could illuminate the objects and also keeping a dark background. Also, although I knew the final capture would be vertical, it was much easier to make the photo horizontally due to the working area of my “soft box”.

Before:

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After: