Detroit Michigan Comp Card Photographers Mary DuPrie
Well I thought I would give computer hell a rest for now and just do a tech post, yeah! We all love those.
The behind the scenes pic breaks down like this, working from the inside out.
The black panels are black Venitian Plaster troweled on a piece of defective laminate (my landlord makes doors and if the laminate comes in with a small defect he gets credit for it from the distributor, they don’t both to pic it back up. He always has racks of the stuff, so I just ask him for it. cost $00
I glued the laminate panels with 3m spray adhesive onto 4x8s of 2 pound 2″ thick Styrofoam, again a defective product. Some glues will melt the Styrofoam if brushed on but you can get away with spraying, so you’ll have to test. laminate cost $00 glue about $15. a can
The ladders are aluminum locking step ladders bought from the store Jacobsons when they went out of business, cost $75 each. These are very expensive ladders bought new so $75 was a steal. Because the ladders are angled i had to make a spacer out of the Styrofoam so the panels would stand up straight. I glued very wide green garden 2 sided velcro to these panels (from Loews) so I can attach them around the ladder (the Velcro is 2″ wide, green, available in the summer at Lowes, you get lots for cheap and I use it for a ton of things around the studio) I simply take a piece of wire hanger in a u shape to connect the laminate Styrofoam panel to the spacer Styrofoam panel.
The floor is shiny black laminate
I rented a fogger from a movie rental place which was really unnecessary as I found a cheap plastic one I liked even better from the party supply place. About $50. There are 2 different kinds of foggers, low lying and I guess just general, each one takes a different fog juice. I rented a large commercial place last year and they asked me if the fogger was water based, apparently there are some that are not and they grease up the floors.
Back wall is a 4×8 1/8″ Luan and I used a hole saw to cut the holes. I first tried to use hardboard, the hole saw did not cut thru at all and was stinky! The wall is leaning up against and quick-gripped to a pipe i have hanging from the ceiling.
The back panel and left side panel has about a 3 inch gap to accept the smoke, I found the vertical slit the best way to add smoke to the scene versus pumping it in from behind.
The lighting in the back consists of 1 light stand with 2 Profoto mono lights. One light is angled down slightly the other angled up; (they are either bare bulb or with a 7″ pan reflector)
The front lighting is usually a Profoto beauty dish, gridded most of the time.
For fill I like to use small strip softboxes with grids because of the control.
The biggest thing I discovered is that the beams don’t show up without fog; the fog stinks and really fills up the studio fast. Some people just have a knack on how to finesse in into the slit. It’s not as easy as it looks to include fog in a studio shot but it sure is fun!….just sayin
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Yup! I am trying this!
Thanks Mary.