Behind the Scenes: A Journey Ended in A Land Unknown

A few weeks ago I attend one of The Wild Ones workshops, this one was held in D.C.. I was really happy that we had a very overcast sky to work with that day, though it was a bit more damp than what we had anticipated, but we didn't let it get to us. A light drizzle never hurt... much, haha. 

After introductions and demonstrations, we headed off to a shooting location we scouted out earlier in the day. It didn't even feel life we were in the same park anymore, the tall jagged cliff's looked so amazing. If you seriously ever get the chance to visit Great Falls Park, DO IT! This park is enormous and has so many things to offer for almost any photographer! 

The day before The Wild One's workshop began, my friend Julie Belton came down to Philly, and I helped assist her on a concept that she wanted to shoot in a nearby park (her photo turned out amazing, just so you know). After we wrapped up her shoot, I decided just to have a little fun while we still had a little time to spare before traveling down to D.C..

Steph absolutely loves this dress, and I've never used in an image before, so why not give it a go. We walked over to the nearby skate park underneath the overpass in F.D.R. Park, and picked a spot to shoot in. I decided to shoot something totally different, so I had Steph lean up against this broken TV, and we gathered all the trash surrounding us and setup this little scene (don't worry, that french fry was something we brought from the diner beforehand, haha). I call it "Trashy Glamour."

Julie had a whole bunch of smoke bombs with her, so we chose to use this huge one that was called The Chainsmoker. Steph posed and we lit that sucker up! It was kind of crazy, the smoke bomb had 4 chamber, each lasting about 15-20seconds and went from purple, blue, green, to yellow. A bunch of nearby skaters came by to see what was going on. An audience is never bad, right?  

Well, here in this image we have the wonderfully kind soul, Joe (The Boy Wonder) Robinson - a true world traveler and creative spirit. I've been following Joel's work for years and he was one of the first photographers I found who introduced me to conceptual photography. I decided to use Joel for the first image I shot during the workshop that day. 

Down near the river, the cliff had a deep depression in one spot and could easily be mistaken as a cave. It was definitely a spot that me and a few others knew had great potential for a bunch of different concepts to be shot their. We each took turn shooting images there. 

I used an extra smoke bombs that Julie gave me to set off for the shot. It was larger than others I've used in the past and I was excited to see what it would really do. We got everything setup and Joel lit the bomb and got back into position. Slowly the smoke rose up from the depression and said straight up because of the windless air. It must have produced smoke for at least 45seconds, and there was so much! Joel got caught in it for a minute, and these things never smell pretty... ever. It's more like suffer-y eggs, yep. 

After shooting Joel in his pose, I began shooting the rest of the scene by panning the camera around. This is pretty tricky when it comes to smoke bombs, and I always will have to manually blend and stitch each image for the composite together. This is because as I'm shooting, the smoke is still constantly moving up and through the air. It's necessary to shoot a whole bunch of extra shots and making sure you've captured images of all the edges of the smoke plumes for the best believability. 

Stitching this image together was trickier than others I've done in the past, but I'm so happy with the final result of the image! 

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As a special treat, here's a close-up of the next image I'll be releasing next week! 

Behind the Scenes: Expelling the Opposed

It was an other beautiful day out in Philadelphia, and my two photo pals came up to visit the area for a fun photo adventure. Earlier in the day I was reading through my notebook, looking at ideas and finding inspiration on what kind of concept I wanted to shoot. I was looking through some of my old work and came across one of my fabric photographs. There is just something I love when I use fabric in my work and I was instantly inspired to do another shoot like. that. 

My friends Tom and Marisa made their way up to Philly this time for our photo adventure, and I knew just the right magical place for us, in Wissahickon Valley Park, right outside of the city. My friend and our model for that day, Steph, was luckily off from work that day and everything seemed just to fall into place. 

This park is one of my favorite places in my area. Long trails, rivers, huge rocks, so many great spots to shoot at! It wasn't too hot that day, but the water felt so refreshing. When we reached our location in the park, Tom and Marisa took turns doing their shoots and I paced around to focus on the idea I wanted to execute and where exactly I was going to set up my camera. An image popped into my head from the movie The Haunting in Connecticut and I knew what I wanted. 

Back in June, I was on a road trip across the mid-west, exploring abandoned buildings. While stopped in Cleveland, I came across smoke bombs that were really cheap. I was really excited and bought a few boxes. I've never used smoke bombs before shooting, so this was something I was pretty eager to try. Since I only shot architectural during that trip, this was my first opportunity to try them out. 

We did a few test shoots with Steph before getting in the water. Once I got a chance to figure the timing with how they work, I planted three or four behind Steph, that I had Marisa ignite for me across the river.

After about 10-15 minutes in the water modeling in the dress, Steph looked over and it started disintegrating in the water! It starting tearing up and falling apart in a lot of places. None of us expected that or had even ever seen that happen before. After, we wrapped up our gear up and relaxed in the park for a bit. This was such a fun day!  

Shout out to Tom for some of these BTS pics!