BREAKDOWN 003 - A Fine Mess (Patreon)

I have a great relationship with Aerial Artists Adelaide and shoot a lot of their events. One of the performers contacted me about doing a powder shoot. I had done a small powder shoot previously with some other aerialists from the group. 

Location

One of the biggest challenges with powder shoots is finding a location. You need a large space, preferably with some character like an old industrial space or old textured walls and somewhere you can make a hell of a mess. These spaces are almost impossible to find, especially in little Adelaide.  The previous shoot was organised by one of the member in her friends coffee warehouse.  

My backup plan was to use a old disused service station in the Adelaide hills. It had a very large roof but open sides. Being at the top of a hill I was worried about how exposed the space would be to ambient light.

The original plan was to use the space behind the building it was smaller but enclosed more so thought the light would be better there, this plan didn't last long.

Setup

My model turned up with with an apparatus she wanted to use. She had mentioning in the lead-up she had it but thought it was optional and hadn't factored in to the location. The back was now out as there was nowhere to attach the apparatus. There were wooden beams but they were way too low and wouldn't support the weight anyway. This brought us back to the front where there was height and large steel beams. The next issue however was these beams were 5-6 metres off the ground at the low point.

My assistant Leighlan, who is great to have on shoots because he sees everything as a challenge was going to try throwing the rope which as a small piece of metal rod at the end to get it over but the gap was tiny and would be very difficult from such a low angle. I was serious dubious about our chances of getting the rigging in place. I said we'd give it 15min and then move on to using the ground only. It was at this point I remembered I brought my fav heavy duty light-stand which just keeps on extending to over 4 meters. So with Leighlan dexterity he was able to attach the end of the rope and flick to the metal rod over one of the smaller beams. We almost has a tougher time trying to re-hook it to pull it down to the ground.

Once it was hooked it was easy to pull the main rope over and hoist the cube apparatus up and tie it off against one of the supports. After first seeing the challenge at hand I'm still amazed it came together.

There were lots of rock rocks and some broken grass around the site so I remembered to bring a broom so we could make sure the area under Jessica at least was safe for her to land on.  

Lighting

Jessica jumped up and gave it a quick test and we then started shooting some set poses. A big issue I have with shoots like this particularly with my very directional lighting style is there is a very small margin to get the light right. As the aerialists are basically working in 3d space their could literally be pointing in any direction and at variable heights.  

Exposure 1/400sec F8 135mm ISO320

 Exposure 1/400sec F8 135mm ISO320 

As the poses can face any direction so we did experiment with lighting positions.

 

Powder

We then introduced the powder, which is this case is plain white flour.

There are a number of types of powder you can use (baby powder, talc, holi powder, flour etc), flour by far is the most cost effective. 

We faced a couple of issues off the bat firstly my assistants had never thrown powder before and there is definitely a knack to getting the right consistencies in the right spot, initially we had some clumping issues as shown below. 

Then in most of the shots the powder was in two lines either side of the model, I later worked out this was due to our model being so close to the wall and the angle of the lights due to this.

In the image below you can see Leighlan throwing powder into the air. One thing I didn't really notice till I watch the video back is we just didn't have enough space between the wall and Jessica. You can see where Leighlan and the powder is it is in in the path of the light at all which is why it doesn't show up as expected in the photos. The issues of getting the rigging up definitely limited the space we had to play with. Later when we put the the power in Jessica's hair it worked better because the distance was greater and at the point the back-lights were centered. 

This was my standard light setup for the first half of the shoot with the two speedlights at 1/1 power in the back corners and the main light HD610 with 90cm softbox to camera left. I was lying on the very dusty ground about 10 metres away with my 135mm lens.

 Exposure 1/125sec F11 50mm ISO160     

Once we moved to the hair the results where much better. 

 Exposure 1/1000sec F3.2 50mm ISO200

Exposure 1/1000sec F3.2 50mm ISO200 

Back on the ground

Jessica started up on her leg but I soon told her to sit on the ground and place her arms behind her to get a longer pose. We had moved the two backlights closer together and the main light was to the right of camera almost in line with the way Jessica was facing.

Exposure 1/1250sec F3.2 135mm ISO320  

 Exposure 1/1250sec F3.2 135mm ISO320  

  Exposure 1/1250sec F3.5 135mm ISO320    

With powder shoots especially if you are doing single fire per setup you need to select when you fire. each time I counted my model in 3-2-1 and the tendency is the fire to early when its generally better to wait longer than you think. Of course we are talking fractions of seconds here as the whole thing happens very fast but as you can see from the 3 images about you get a very different look at all stages. And of course every time you do it the powder dynamics will differ so the more shots you take the greater chance of getting one that compositionally more pleasing than the others.

I really need to work out how to do burst mode while syncing all the flashes so I can get multiple frames for setup, I'm working on that for the next one.

We then moved the main light to the opposite side of Jessica because her head ended facing slightly back.

This was the last shot of the day and probably my favourite. Beautiful posture, head position, hair, relaxed expression and the arch or powder is nicely formed. In many of the photos what a narrow in on is the amazing forms we get with the hair. 

   Exposure 1/1250sec F3.5 135mm ISO320     

GEAR

So very glad I decided to take the M3 stand! We would have been lost without it.

And that's a wrap!

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Date: 1st April 2018

Location: Adelaide Hills, SA, Australia

Aerialist:  Jessica Ashley Trotta

Photographer: Steamkittens

https://www.facebook.com/steamkittens

Assistant: Ren Panno

Assistant: Leighlan Doe

Shoot Time: 2 hours

Total Frames: 196