Elinor and the T-Rex (65 Million Years from Home)

Noor Model Noor, Elinor Frejd, cornered by a T-Rex 75 million years from home.

Note: If you want to see more of Noor Model Noor: check out her web pages:

• The Noor Model Noor Facebook page.
• The Noor Model Noor Tumblr page, with some material Facebook won't allow.
• Noor Model Noor on Instagram.

Noor Model Noor, Elinor Frejd, is a model in Gothenburg who does both ordinary and alternative style photo shoots. Elinor and I met in a Facebook group for models and photographers, and decided to meet to see if we could do a shoot together.

We had a first meeting in a restaurant, to see if we could come up with ideas we were both interested in. The first meeting went well, and during the following week, I sketched out ideas for shots, and sent storyboards to Elinor, so she could make wardrobe and makeup decicions, and other preparations.

We decided to keep it simple the first time around. Some of the ideas we considered would require a team, but Petra, Petri, and Julia, the photographers I usually work with, were all occupied the coming weekend. Rather than wait, we decided to save the more complicated setups for another time.

So, It was to be just Elinor, Tristan the T-Rex, and me.

Behind the Scenes: Elinor and Tristan the T-Rex get acquainted.

It was a great shoot. We started off with a series of dramatic noir-inspired, hard-boiled detective vs. rampaging T-Rex shots. Elinor really went in for the acting, and Tristan was on his best behavior. He didn't try to eat his co-star even once.

I'll publish a blog post with more shots of Noor Model Noor soon. Meanwhile, I suggest you visit her own web pages:

• The Noor Model Noor Facebook page.
• The Noor Model Noor Tumblr page, with some material Facebook won't allow.
• Noor Model Noor on Instagram.

Noir - A 3-light Film Noir style lighting setup

Film Noir: Lighting Eyes With a Pizza Box Gobo

A Film Noir style shot, backlit through a bed sheet, and lit from the front by shaping flash light with a pizza box. Very much in the spirit of a low budget noir style movie.

In a previous post I showed how to create a backlit Film Noir style photo using a bed sheet hung in a doorframe as a large softbox. That worked, but the resulting photo was a silhouette. A bit dark even for a noir style photo.

Lighting the eyes a bit would make the photo come alive. How do you do that with a hotshoe flash without also lighting the entire room, and destroying the deep shadows?

You need a thin sliver of light, aimed at the eyes. Since I did this in the middle of the night, I could not go to the photo store and buy an expensive light modifier. I had to get creative, and find something that could shape light the way I wanted.

A pizza box and some gaffer tape made an excellent light shaper.

A pizza box had the right size and shape, so I brought out the gaffer tape and used it to mount the pizza box on a flash. I put the flash, with a radio trigger, on a lightstand, and was ready to go.

The pizza box gobo in action. I added an extra piece of gaffer tape on the right side to eliminate some light that was hitting the wall instead of my eyes.

It took a couple of tries, but when I had adjusted the height of the lightstand, it was pretty easy to hit my eyes with the flash. I started with the flash on 1/64 of full power, and turned it up little by little.

Easy to do, took a couple of minutes, but it made a lot of difference to the photo. Check out the original silhouette version, and you will understand what I mean.

Film Noir: Creating a silhouette with a bed sheet in a doorway

A bed sheet in a doorway makes a great softbox.

I held a flash photo tutorial at the Lerum Photo Club earlier this evening. We had a wonderful evening shooting a live model, gorillas(!), and dinosaurs(!!!).

I was asked to model too, not because of my looks, but because of my hat. I did not have time to shoot anything myself during the workshop, so when I came home, I decided to do a noir style shot before going to bed.

A bed sheet made an excellent diffuser. The softbox is the hallway.

The setup for the shot was very simple:

I used gaffer tape to fasten a bedsheet in my kitchen doorway. I put a flash and a white shoot through umbrella in the hallway. The idea was to get two layers of diffusion, first when the light from the flash goes through the umbrella, then when it hits the bedsheet.

I put a 30 mm lens on my camera, mounted the camera on a Gorillapod, a small tripod, tilted it, and angled it upwards. I used a radio trigger to set off the flash.

I used a shoot through umbrella as my first diffusion layer. This ensured that the light would spread evenly through the bed sheet. The same multilayer diffusion idea is used in many professional softboxes.

I darkened the kitchen, put the flash on half strength, and ran a few test shots. The trick is to remember that you can darken the kitchen by reducing the exposure time, without affecting the flash pulse at all. then you can increase the aperture to make the light from the flash more intense. Of course, you can also increase or reduce the ISO setting to get the overall effect you want.

In post, I used Aperture to increase the contrast a bit, and erase some reflexes from objects on the kitchen sink. I also cloned out a few tell-tale details on the toy gun. I bought it in a toy store, and if it is well lit, it does not look very dangerous at all.

By shooting from a low angle and tilting the camera a bit, I made the silhouette in the doorway look large and threathening. This is a trick you often see in old movies.

The hat and hiding the face in shadow also contributes to the feeling of danger.

Easy, and fun, and one more thing I can bring back to the Horror Noir project.

I also made a variant photo with my eyes lit. To do that, I needed a very narrow light modifier. I made it out of a pizza box. You can read about it here.