Photo meeting at Caratira's

Emma and Ida Stranne were the models for the evening.

I visited a photography group in Sjövik yesterday evening. The group, led by Mia Johansson of Caratira's Kennel, has been active, very active, for quite awhile. They have made zombie and fantasy photography a specialty. The group is run as a study circle, and the members range from experienced photographers to beginners.

If you have followed this blog, you may have noticed fantasy and trick photography are recurring theme here. I recently started a photography group in Gothenburg that does similar things. Thanks to the Internet, it did not take us long to discover we had similar interests.

Mia and her group were doing a Clown and Mannequin shoot, and Mia asked me if I would join them. Of course, I could not miss such an opportunity. Sinikka Eriksson, who is a member of both groups, and I went to Sjövik for the shoot.

We were greeted by Mia, the models Emma and Ida Stranne, Mia's daughter Casandra, who handled most of the makeup, and several photographers.

Sad clown.

There were strobes in the studio of course, but I opted to go with my hotshoe flashes instead. I usually have 1/4 CTO gels on when I shoot people, but because both Emma and Ida were painted white, I went without them this time.

I used two flashes. I zoomed the back light to 24mm to spread the light a bit, and put a speed grid on the key light to get a very narrow beam. 

Then, I recruited Mia and Sinikka as assistants. I asked Sinikka to hold the key light at about 4:30 o'clock, and Mia to hold the back light at about 01:30. (I use the clock system to position lights. Michael Zelbel has a made a video about it. There is some nudity in the video, but the clock system works when everyone keeps their clothes on too.)

By positioning both light's on Ida's right side, I would get the hat well lit. A third flash at 10:30 would have given more separation from the background, but there were many people who were waiting to shoot, and I did not want to hold things up.

Clown Noire.

 My main objective was to experiment with the shadow from Ida's hat. I have somewhat lose plans for a noir style shoot of my own, and getting the shadows right are very important.

When shooting Emma, I moved the backlight to 10:30. That made the angle between key and back light 180°. That way, a little light fell on her bowknot.

Since I had the opportunity, I went for one more thing: Enraged clown! Next time, I will post a tutorial on how I did it.