Workshop - Still Life/Emotion - Fear

For this workshop I was teamed up with Katie.  Our still life shoot had to show the emotion of fear.  When I heard this was what we had to portray my instant reaction was ‘look at my face now’ that’s how you portray fear!

I was in a bit of a quandary and couldn’t really think of how you could emote fear in a still life.  Between Katie and myself we eventually came up with an idea of how things relating to war could bring up the emotion of fear. 

With that in mind and a photograph to hand to give us inspiration we bounced some ideas off each other.  With war in mind I thought that we could use some army related items.  My son used to be a cadet in the army, and I knew that I could use these to add texture to the scene.  I also had some binoculars, and an old camera that could add to the scene.  The problem that we faced though was finding old newspapers showing war scenes, and also trying to get hold of a gun to give the fear element.  I do know someone who works with firearms, and it was really lucky that she was able to lend me an old style gun that we could use in our still life.  As well as these items, I also brought along some different fabrics to add another dimension.  To say the least I was a little bogged down when I came into college.

When talking to Katie we decided that we wanted a low key set up.  Emma helped us to set this up after we had made the mistake of trying to move the large dark backdrop over a trestle table.  This is a mistake that we won’t be doing again.  Emma managed to get us a small backdrop that we draped over the table.  We had decided that we wanted to use a strobe light with a snoot attached. 

We arranged the various items on the table using the uniform, and some hessian that I had as texture.  I also took my boots off, as they did from the back look a bit ‘army’.  Katie added a world map, and a large poppy flower.

We used a light meter to take a reading, and the reading was between F/5.6 and F/8.0.  As we were working in the studio we used and ISO of 100, with Auto White Balance.  The shutter speed varied between 1/125 and 1/160. 

I used my Nikon D7000 with my kit lens (18-105mm). 

We decided on using a snoot with the strobe light, as we wanted to produce a halo effect.

We also used the radio trigger to control the flash.

We used my tripod to take photographs, but even though it is a good make of tripod, the lens on the camera did tend to droop, so it was necessary to hold the lens in place.  You can buy an attachment to keep your lens stable on a tripod.

After we had used our DSLR cameras we were given the opportunity to use the Mamiya camera, a Medium Format camera.  This was the first time I had used a Medium Format camera.

Emma helped us to load the daylight film into the film holder, and showed us how to operate the Mamiya.  We had to use a step ladder to use the Mamiya because of the angle that we wanted to shoot at.  We also had to use one of the college’s tripod to stabilize the Mamiya.

Before taking our images we took a meter reading which came back at F/5.6.  Where with a DSLR you can vary the reading slightly we had to be more exact with the Mamiya.

We focused the lens and them proceeded to take our photograph of the scene.

'Fear'