In a world of über-sensationalism I only thought it fitting that my
surreal, facetious photographic interpretation of the musical Annie Get Your
Gun should be an over-the-top-one, hence the film noir treatment and my
choice of an über-feminine shape, graciously supplied by body builder, Judy
McFarlen. I wanted to juxtapose the feminine form, clad in a provocative
cocktail dress, against a dark scary environment, but instead of seeing Judy
as vulnerable, as the victim, as women are so often portrayed; I made her
the predator, she is the hunter-goddess Diana and she is out for revenge.
Thus explains Judy’s expression which is stoic, frigid, because revenge is
best served cold.
Photographically this image of Judy is all about light even though this is a
really dark shot. Interestingly enough there are far more dark pixels than
light in the ‘un-Photoshop-ed’ version, yet it is the light pixels that draw
our attention; the light pixels are the minority and the dark the majority,
and just like racial differences that cause so much tension in the world, it
is the minority that draws all the attention. Our senses, in this case,
sight, are no different and so for the minority to exist we need the
majority to contrast it against; the majority is our ‘canvas – which is a
really long-winded way of saying, if my high-contrast lighting were to
appear dramatic, then attaining black without detail was über important.
First step in creating this image was composition and choosing camera
position. A low camera position, 12 inches from floor to lens tip, was
chosen to make Judy all the more imposing. In most of my shoots, step two is
figuring out depth of field. In this image since the background was to be a
dark, detail-free tone, it would look the same whether it was in focus or
out – the only consideration for depth of field, then, would be keeping Judy
sharp. F8 was chosen since f-8 would be more than enough to keep all of Judy
in focus. F8 was also a good choice because f 8 is an optimal aperture for
sharpness on the 28–70 mm f 2.8 zoom lens (set to 58 mm) I was using for
this shot.
Lighting prep was next on the agenda – Judy was to be lit solely with studio
strobes and so the ambient light in the room needed to be dealt with (see
Image 003). Ambient light usually affects shadows only, and obviously has
more affect on lighter- than darker-toned objects sitting in the shadows.
The room’s ambient light was provided by a series of fluorescent tubes,
mounted in the ceiling. These fluorescent lights needed to be turned off or
cancelled out with shutter-speed to prevent them from contaminating my
lighting on the set and subject. As it turned out they could not be turned
off for very long and so I needed to work with them turned on for most of
the shoot. To deal with this potential ambient threat, I took several
incident meter readings around the photoset with the dome of the meter
pointed at the fluorescent tubes. The shutter-speed control on the meter was
dialled about until the aperture read-out on the meter’s LCD screen read my
pre-chosen shooting aperture of f8. The shutter-speed responsible for making
the meter read f8 was duly noted – it read 1 second. Rather than setting my
camera to f8 at 1 second, which would correctly illuminate the set with the
fluorescent lights and would totally screw with the studio strobe lighting
that was about to be created, I set the camera to f8 at 1⁄100th of a second.
This shutter-speed at this aperture ensured no illumination from the
fluorescent tubes since 1⁄100th of a second is almost 7 stops faster than
the one-second shutter-speed that the meter was calling for. In other words,
I underexposed the room lights by 7 stops (measured with an incident meter)
to ensure that they would not foul my pristine strobe lighting with their
filthy-green, depressing light (see callout box How Dark Is Dark Enough).
When figuring out the best shutter-speed keep in mind shutterflash- sync
speeds for your camera – my 1⁄100th of a second shutter-speed was an
excellent choice for the digital SLR used being that it is slower than the
manufacturer’s documented, maximum safe shutter-flash-sync speed of 1⁄200th
of a second.
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