 |  | | | | |  Welcome to the "Adventure's in Photography" by Rory! To begin, please allow me a brief business-minded offering: If you need a pretty cool gift to give for Christmas, you may consider the following 3 pretty cool options: Choice A: purchasing a photo shoot for a friend or family member (I'll happily send you a quote via email), Choice B: if you have starred in one of my past shoots/events, consider purchasing a photo as a gift from my photo vault here. Choice C: if you starred in a past wedding that I have shot, consider giving one my huge books as a gift by clicking here. Now, allow me to change from salesman to storyteller...:) In this month's adventure, we invade an aged, enigmatic downtown church to create the latest album cover for the rock band Philos, whose latest single "Defying Gravity" has been collecting grandiose attention from coast to coast and has earned them the special audience of Steven Schwartz, who originally wrote the tune for the musical Wicked. Their ultra-modified version of the song is invigorating, and demands an appropriate image to accompany the promotion of the single. |  The leading picture, which succeeded in becoming the cover for their iTunes image, is an example of either providence or dumb luck in action. We had a number of large, empty rooms at our disposal with tons of windows, but started the shoot late in the afternoon and we were left with only a few minutes of natural light in the sky. I had to compensate for the darkening sky by leaving my shutter open for 4, 8, then 15 seconds per exposure- a technique that, for better or worse, creates sci-fi light effects when combined with perceivable motion. I wanted to avoid having to use Photoshop to composite the image, and so I recalled one of the first neato photo tricks that I ever learned..utilizing multiple flash pops in a single exposure! |  The Magic Bush
I had the honor of meeting photographer Gregory Heisler when I was 17 and very curious about photography. He described to me how to leave the shutter open and use multiple flashes to impress two different scenarios into one frame, as demonstrated by this photo that he had recently shot of George Bush Sr. George had to look in one direction and be lit on one side, the flash would fire, and then George would turn his head towards the other direction, and another flash would fire from the other side-giving him two faces in one frame. It was my understanding that this was done in one exposure, without the use of sandwiching two negatives. His 'behind the scenes' description was as transforming to me as when Spiderman found web glands in his wrists. I was ready to have of fun with visual fiction! I started to invite friends over to my house and make photos of them holding their own head in their hands, standing beside themselves, slugging out differences between themselves, etc. It was a like David Blaine discovering what he could do with a bathtub. |  My Take on the Birth of the Multiple Exposure In the early days of photography, exposures lasted for many minutes, requiring head clamps to be placed behind the necks of the subjects (ouch!) in order to keep them from becoming blurry in the photograph. Eventually, the chemistry used to record light was improved and became more sensitive, so that artificial light could be used to make an image. Some photographers utilized a hybrid technique, as represented in these black and white images: Thomas Eakin's "History of a Jump" from 1885 and Harold Edgerton's image of Densmore Shute from 1938-employing both a long shutter speed and powerful pulses of light. Oh yes...back to dumb luck: I hadn't intended to make a double exposure for the Philos image, but the light in the sky had grown so dim that my exposures required 15 seconds to get any light exposure from the windows. It was an impossibility to have the boys of Philos remain absolutely still for that length of time without my head and body clamps handy (Where did I put those again?). So what could be done to make a successful image? |  As you can see, the boys looked especially dramatic laying down on the ground. We juxtaposed the vulnerable, sleepytown-version of the boys laying on the floor with the pretense of a standing 'rock star' look-and we came out with the final image that leads this article. For the shot, we turned off all of the lights in the room, I pressed the shutter to fire the first flash, then the boys fell to the ground, assumed their sleepytown positions, and I called out for our faithful assistant Robin Giannattasio to fire the second flash. Note in lead image how the window light exposed in the area where Kenny's chest was when he was standing-giving the scene a ghostly look that, by dumb luck or providence, fit wonderfully with the theme of "Defying Gravity". I am grateful to Kenny, Micheal, Robin, and Vince, for their especially generous attitude during this shoot--they embraced my far-fetched idea, they were willing to lay upon a dirty floor in their funky duds, and they arranged the wonderful location for us to use. They are noble sports! If you would like to visit Philos on iTunes--just click here.
Until next month, many cheers and Happy Thanksgiving! Rory
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