hi
thankyou very much, it's much appreciated
oz regarding backdrop
the backdrop is a 50% grey you can make the background darker simply by aiming the lights away from the backdrop and narrowing the light by snooting the strobe or by using scrims to prevent light spillage
the professional way is to use scrims but that adds more complication to the setup
inadvertantly when i snoot my strobes all light is narrowed and very little spill hits the background, apart from the blotches of light you see
if it looks darker its simply a case of shutterspeed and fstops
i shot these with 1/250 f5.6 that would darken the ambient light on the background compared to 1/125
upping fstops and placement of strobes can also make the background darker here is an example of a white background
since the final result of this editorial piece is a constructed image i didnt really care about the background because i was going to etch all images
but the narrowing of the light just made the backgrounds dark and interesting
looking back i could of saved heaps of time if i shot her on a greenscreen so i could chromakey her out
Andre
regarding my final concept it takes me less than an hour to deepetch the image the hard bit is the final finishing getting the tones right
and of course merging studio shot witth the background concep
the whole job from organisation to final product took me a month.
post production is was secondary to concept development
i art directed and took care of similar post production techniques on a project called 'women of the world' a cofe table book coming out in march, i can't post anything from it since it's not published yet, so you have to look out for it.
oh and i need to do a shout out to my stylist Estelle, hair Jerome, Makeup Fern and Nicole our gorgeous
model without them couldn't do it