Story Shoot: NERF’D TWO
I’ve had an idea for a second NERF shoot for quite a while now (see here for the first one), and had finally set a date to do it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have near the numbers I was hoping for, and had to rework the story on the spot. I think that’s a good thing, however, as the ability to think on my feet has gotten me through a whole lot.
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This story is of a weapons deal gone wrong. The weapons dealer is waiting for a new buyer on some back road of suburbia.
The buyer seems interested in the wares, but something’s a little off.
OH SNHAP! HE’S WEARING A WIRE!
Probably not the best day for him at this point.
Yeah, definitely not his best day.
Each shot was done with either two or three lights: An Alien Bee AB800, a LumoPro 120 hotshoe flash, and that big bright continuous light source in the sky. When you’re limited to only one “big” light and are shooting on location, you really need to make as much use of the sun as possible. It’s much better suited as a backlight, as having your actors/models facing into it can lead to squinty eyes.
I made extensive use of crosslighting throughout the shoot. I’m a huge fan of the technique in general, as it’s easy to setup and visualize, and gives you a very modern look.
The only lens used all day was the DA* 16-50/2.8, which has quickly become my favorite lens. The one downside, in this case, was that the images were way too clean. I thought about a few ways to dirty them up, and ended up importing an image I had taken of a rusty sheet of metal, converting it to grayscale, putting it on top of the images as an overlay, and then using a transparency mask to clean up the areas I wanted slightly cleaner. This leads to a sort of texture vignette that I really dig.
I slightly overwarmed the images as well, in order to keep set the mood I was looking for. Just to try it out, I have a full set of them with a cooler, more accurate, color temperature. They look fine, but just don’t have the punch these do, in my opinion at least.
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