Pirjo Yli-Maunula with home renovation plastic tarp. Cornerstone of all fine art projects! Lighting is Westcott Apollo Medium softbox with a grid boomed over her, pointing straight down.
I remember shooting 7" Fox Mulder and Dana Scully action figures years ago for fun in my apartment on a rainy day and there was some plastic laying around. It made for interesting stuff both as a light modifier or just by shooting through it, having it sit between the lens and the subject. When I asked Pirjo Yli-Maunula to sit for me, I picked up a couple of rolls of different kinds of plastic, and some tarp, and some rope, and I was ready to start serial killing making a cool portrait with her!
Also Twin Peaks had just started its new season and we were reminiscing about the original show and feeling excited about the new edition. I figured the Twin Peaks OST would be fitting background music for our studio session and so I cranked it up on Spotify.
Laura Palmer dead in the plastic is an iconic image and it works wonderfully in color. (Lynch reportedly spent a great deal of time placing all the pebbles and crap himself on Sheryl Lee's face.) I wanted to evoke that image but also work in black and white and make a real stark portrait with geometric shapes that the stiff plastic easily lends itself to. And the more you beat up that plastic the better it looks, I think.
Anyway, Pirjo had recently acquired some kick-ass scars on her knees (due to surgery) which I wanted immediately to make pictures of. And so went to work on creating some kind of character for the portrait.
We started with this:
There is a black fabric on the background, which was long enough to spread on the floor under the chair. Removed all the extraneous stuff in post, mainly by pulling the shadows to black. Gridded softbox on the left.
We talked about this character and how she has these scars but she is still trying to be graceful. But what's with the plastic? Did she put it on? Someone else? Is she being held in some dungeon somewhere? Is this an elaborate selfie? Fine art asks more questions than it answers!
I initially wanted to shoot everything in black and white and so I made the LCD screen preview on the back of my camera be monochromatic as well. As I was shooting RAW, I knew that I would see all the images in color when I downloaded the images from the memory card to Lightroom. I wasn't paying any attention to the white balance or any of that stuff when shooting--I figured I'd discard all that anyway--but some of the images worked really well in color.
Like so:
Same lighting as top image.
This turned out to be beautiful in color, which was a surprise to me. Sometimes it's nice to have the option of having it both ways when shooting digital. This is my favorite of the set.
I had also brought in another roll of plastic which was tinted blue, but I didn't mind because of the whole black and white thing. Well, who knew! I ended up editing those images in color as well, messing with the cool and warm tones in Lightroom/Photoshop.
Gridded speedlight on the left and behind the subject. I suspended the blue plastic between my camera and Pirjo and shot through it.
Same deal, except now there is a gridded softbox boomed over her as key light. Gridded speedlight from the left/behind serves now a kicker role.
All in all, we spent a couple of hours messing around the studio, really just experimenting and making it up as we went along. But there's something nice about plastic sheeting, I have to admit. Maybe next time bring a roll of it along for a corporate headshot?