Back in the 1980s, I often used a smoke machine in my tiny, basement studio. I soon learned that I needed smoke that dissipated quickly! Anyway, those were the '80s, when the technology of film was developed (pun intended) to the point where not much could be improved on it any longer. Along with that, we pushed ourselves to come up with creative tools to produce the visions we had. (Some of those "visions" were affected by the fact that we grew up in the '60s... but I digress.)
We used soft focus lens and filters, graduated filters, split field filters, PC lenses, kaleidoscope filters, vignetting devices, negative masking tricks like sandwiching them with glassines to produce a textured image, projecting slides to textured glass and re-photographing them, double exposures... the list goes on and on. The point was that all of those things were done because we became bored with creating well-crafted, "straight" images. But eventually those fads faded, and artful image-making returned. But then the digital revolution hit us.
Fast forward to today. Many of today's new photographers have little patience for working on the craft of high quality image making. They'd rather run an old photo action over their images and call it "art". And we're seeing a resurgence of a few of the tools we used toward the end of the film era.
I really have no issue with all this... as long as it's used to create images that will stand the test of time and not be dated by something WE happened to be into at the time. How many double exposures can you think of that rate with the best photographs of all time?
Anyway... sorry for that rant. This brings me to a session I did last night. I envisioned a strong image of a powerful tennis player in the tennis club I play at. I chose Gina who is an excellent player, and also the daughter of the owner of the club. That made it easier to be able to create the image in my mind... after hours without players in the background. Jackie, Gina's mom also helped with wetting Gina's hair and skin for a sweaty look.
I saw the image pretty much straight. But I wanted to bring a fog machine along just in case I preferred that look. It's a bug sprayer filled with fog (unfortunately not the quickly dissipating kind!).
When I got there, I found that the ceiling was much brighter than the floor, and so I shot an HDR image just in case I needed that. I really didn't want to do a composite, since that technique is over done these days, but I wanted that option in case I needed it. (I didn't use it... the fog pretty much took care of the contrast.) By the way, most photographers do composites as "Scene Swaps", where they drop someone into a place that person never was. I hate that, and won't do that. I think it devalues what we do. Is anyone ever impressed anymore by that? Not me. But I AM impressed when an image is honest... actually created AT that location. Our clients value that real experience more as well. But again, I digress.
In this case she WAS there. I would just be using the composite technique to accomplish what I might not be able to do to my satisfaction.
Back to the fog. Yes, I got seduced with the fog look anyway. So much for timeless art! This is pretty much a straight image, with some local contrast added with Nik Tonal Contrast and Topaz Adjust. A photographer friend, Mark Lazarz, helped by working the fog machine. Mine pretty much has a mind of its own, sometimes it spurts when it wants to, but he was helpful in giving me huge gushes of fog. I waited until it dissipated. We used a fan in front of her to keep the foreground area clean of fog. I pressed the shutter release, and... we got it!
It's such a thrill to make an image in real life rather than compose it in Photoshop (ho hum). Thanks to Gina, my model, Jackie, her mom who took too much delight in throwing water at Gina, and Mark, the fog man.
