Tuesday 16 December 2014

RESEARCH: Gregory Crewdson

During my presentation, I mentioned my love for Gregory Crewdson's work and received the feedback that I would not be able to achieve the same effect as Crewdson as I did not have a crew of people. I am determined to try my best so have conducted some research into how he works and what lighting he used. I plan to experiment over the course of this module with alternative lighting, both in the studio and outdoors.

Gregory Crewdson explores staged photography to the very limits, and I wanted to use him as inspiration as I am telling an alternative story of fairytale photography and the children's books I am looking at. I plan to experiment with use of lighting to create dramatic and mellow mood in my images, to represent the darker side of fairytales and the issues that were not clear to me as a child.



I decided to do some research into the type of lighting that Crewdson uses and whether it would be achievable on a student budget. I have been reading a website called Guess The Lighting, where a fellow photographers analysing lighting and draws diagrams explaining lighting techniques and direction. He also writes in tremendous detail about the cameras used and the make of lighting that he owns.



He explains using this diagram how Crewdson lighting that image of the woman planting a flower bed. It's interesting to see the amount of lighting that goes in to lighting a seemingly dark image. Looking at the diagram, there has been eleven lights used, and reading the text that the photographer has wrote it gives a breakdown of the lighting he used and how powerful they were. He commented saying "there is not so much a key light as various light sources [are] hitting our model and leaving her in different degrees of shadow. Two 200 watt, tungsten fresnel (shot through a silk) are eight feet camera left. Two other 200 watt, tungsten fresnels are in the same spot camera right. They all serve as front fill on our mode. A 650 watt, tungsten fresnel (shot through a silk) is out of frame camera left and slightly behind the model, shaping the highlights on her face. A 1k fresnel (shot, again, through a silk) is behind the kitchen door in the rear left of the shot. Two, 1k fresnels (silk) are behind the kitchen window in the rear right. Two more 1k fresnels (silk) are behind the front, right kitchen window. A Rosco Delta 6000 fog machine creates the light streaks. A 100 watt lightbulb hangs in the chandelier to give a touch of reality"

Although there are a lot of lights and different techniques used to get the effect desired, I think this still can be used as inspiration and will allow me to look further into lighting techniques and how they can be used on a  location scenario. I plan to use flashguns and external red head lights powered by a generator at Blue Lagoon over the Christmas period with a male model (all my other female models have gone home for Christmas), just as experimentation towards my FMP.

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