Creating nostalgia is often the result of simple practice…and the use of one light!
Have you ever been rummaging around in your grandmother’s attic or perhaps find a box of old family history items in your mom’s garage? The treasures are in there awaiting discovery. Presented here is a small pair of baby shoes that have been preserved by being bronzed. No, they were not my shoes but they do belong to a great friend. They were found shortly after the death of his mother and he shared them with me just recently. In terms of their age, let’s just say they have been around for more than sixty years…
As soon as I saw them, I knew exactly how this picture would look if I could just find the right props. Listen, I am not an overly artistic guy, spending much of my career documenting specifically other people’s visions, but in this case, the final image is precisely what I saw in my mind.
The setup shot included here reveals the different elements that make up this image. Propping, of course, is where I started then I attacked the lighting. I determined that the light should appear as if it was coming in a window in an old attic at sunrise. To achieve this I placed a warming gel over my direct light source, Profoto’s new B10X Plus. I had cut numerous misc. holes in a sheet of foam core to give the light a “dappled” appearance. One of the things you learn with practice is that there is great control over the sharpness of the shadows from the holes based on the distance from the light source to the foam core AND the distance from the foam core to the subject.
Taken with my Fujifilm GFX 50R with the GF120mm macro lens, there was a little post-production in terms of contrast and a slight vignette. But the lighting and the shadows being shown did come straight from the camera. Practice Practice Practice. It will always yield great results whenever we get in a room by ourselves and begin the process of exploring.
