You're right. I don't blog often enough, and I'm sorry about that. The infrequency of posts isn't indicative of infrequent happenings, however, and I'll use this first blog entry in a while to demonstrate that fact with a sneak peek at a personal project I've recently undertaken. It's a conceptual series about superheroes that I've been shooting these past several months, and am continuing to shoot. The central question of the series is: What is everyday life like with a superpower, and what would superheroes do in a city without crime? All of the photos so far are composites of many more than just a couple photos, so each is fairly labor intensive and most have involved several individual shoots. Here are a couple of the images I've done so far—I hope you get a kick out of them. As always, feel free to click on them to view them larger.
This was a composite of seven shots in total. Can you tell what they are? Oh, you don't want to play that game? Okay, the first is the cityscape—it's downtown Seattle as viewed from Smith Tower, a 38-story building from 1914 that until 1931 was the tallest building west of the Mississippi, and until 1962 was the tallest building on the west coast. (I actually hosted pub trivia for years so forgive me if you're not interested in the factoids, but I think that's kind of cool...right?) The second shot in this photo is also part of the cityscape—the tallest building, the one at both edges of the frame. I added it for the sake of composition. The third shot is the flag blowing in the wind, which I thought just added a nice touch. The fourth and fifth shots are the superhero and her cape. The sixth shot is the building on the left, the one she's cleaning. It's a building a block from my studio, which I shot from a ladder at ground level. I just kept the frame and replaced the windows with my own reflections. The last shot is the sky, which I actually shot about a year and a half ago while on a road trip. The "Capitol City Times" sign on the building was added in Photoshop to tie this shot in with the other shots in the series like the one below.
How does an indestructible person get a haircut? I found this wonderful barbershop while scouting downtown. It's called The Stewart Street Barbershop, and the owner, Steve, couldn't have been more generous when I asked if I could shoot in his shop. Nearly everything in the shop was as I shot it, although I did add every element (except the pole) on the wall behind the models. And while I did have my superhero model hold an actual magazine, I mocked up a back cover and shot my own image for my new front cover. The sparks, of course, were all made in Photoshop, as was the shop decal on the window. And speaking of the window, the scene outside was shot about a mile and a half away on a different day. In reality, a bus stop is outside the barbershop, and it didn't work for the photo. Replacing the scene outside the window meant replacing reflections in the window—the barber's back, the sparks, the barber's pole. All in all, this shot was a fair amount of work, but as I've said before, I really enjoy the details. And I really like this shot.
As I say, these are just a couple—there are more already and there will be more in the future. I'm really looking forward to going more in depth on the making of each photo, and to bringing the whole series to the blog and the site when it's ready. In the meantime, I'll be offering peeks here and there, so please check back when you think of it. Thanks!