Return Inside Part 2

So, after a series of model problems slowly resolved themselves to the positive end, all I had left to do was take the photographs. Easier said than done. All manner of set backs muddied my progress, but eventually we got everything together - a flowy dress, a cake, some people, a high velocity fan, the plague doctor, the fabric, and my model.

The model was a bit apprehensive at first - the dress was much more sheer than I'd had any knowledge of, and she didn't relish prancing about in "her knickers". Luckily, only a couple of the shots included the dress, but I couldn't exactly cut them (one was the necessary counter to the image I took earlier, with my other model). We ended up doing it was a pair of long socks and bicycle shorts, and after a good hundred shots of us throwing around fabric in the blowing fan, all I had left was too composite. And honestly that was the longest I have ever worked on a photograph. Paintings and drawings, sure, but never a single photograph.
 

Even after it was done I ended up tweaking it on several occasions, moving elements around for a better flow and adding treatments. Now it is one of the crown pieces of my final project - for all of these images will of course come together in my thesis show.

The other images required work in other ways. The lighting was frequently solid and well composed, but the plague doctor figure was still too "fake". Despite my best efforts, he looked like exactly what he was - a man in a glorified Halloween costume. I suppose it is to my credit that the mask looks store-bought and not hand made, but I had to do something. That "something" ended up being a lot of burning in Lightroom, pulling the Plague Doctor out of shadows that had never really existed in the original image, as if he was rising from the depths of some great, uneasy darkness. My lighting professor always did remind us that often the error was in over-lighting and giving too much information, and in this case I cannot disagree.

Why I failed in this to begin with is uncertain. Perhaps too much dependence on a one directional strobe for lack of other lights, perhaps feeling rushed by the needs of the model, or some over-thinking on my part due to the importance of this body of work. I simply cannot say. Whichever reason I do not dislike the end results, so it all turned out well in the end regardless.