Indiana Michael and the Studio of Doom

I first got the idea for this shoot, a few weeks ago. This is my first serious photographic award and whilst technically, I won 8 awards, I actually only ended up getting 1 award ‘South East, Photographer of the year’.

Anyone who knows me, will know that I am a big cinema fan. My degree is in film making and I have worked on films both in front and occasionally behind camera. There are many directors and cinematographers who have influenced me but one stands out and that is Steven Spielberg, who is one of the great visionaries of cinema.

This photo of course, is inspired by Spielbergs classic Raiders of the Lost Arc, which at the beginning of the film features Indiana Jones, entering a ancient tomb trying to find an ancient golden statue.

So, this award is my metaphorical golden statue, shot in my studio. The shoot, was surprisingly short and prop, just items, I have around the house generally. I have several backgrounds and this is one of my Lastolite pop up background, which doubles well for a cave. The plinth is a broken bird water bath, which I hadn’t taken to the dump yet. The shirt (one of the few, I own), The strap is from my Fujifilm camera bag. The hat, something I have had for years.

For the shoot, I used my D800, with the Voigtlander 58mm f/1.4 Nokton. I shot at f/16, with a shutter speed of 1/125. I used 3 studio lights and of course the speedlight you see in front of camera.

I always know, how I wanted to set up the shot. It is a simple setup, with two grided strip boxes, slightly behind me to the left and right, as well as a defused large beauty dish, to the front left. The beauty dish is quite low, to put some light on my face.

In my first image, I realised that my face was obscured, so I had to me, plinth to the left and me to the right. I was originally looking at camera but decided that I needed to look at the award, to make the image look right. The flash was introduced around half way through the shoot. I had originally, meant to use a bag of sand, but the idea of using a flash, seemed to fit better and it had the bonus of allowing me to have a catch light in both eyes.

I did think about adding foliage and smoke but in the end I felt it would be a distraction, so left both out.

Editing was very simple, I did the main edit on around 10 minutes, with the main thing removing a catch light in my right eye.

I can actually say, the time it took me to create, photograph and edit, was the same amount of time, it took, me to turn on the oven and make chips, peas and cold chicken, which I was cooking, whilst doing the shoot (around 50 minutes).