Premium/ The “1917”

Hi guys, I am honored to be asked to write about our photo essay called “1917”.
I got the idea for the photoshoot from the model, Rosa, who got her father’s old uniform.

She asked me if I would be interested to do a photoshoot with her, and if we could come up with something interesting together.

Rosa’s father was a Finnish border guard officer and she wanted to shoot some photos with the uniform.

The idea we got together, was that we wanted to create images that would reflect something old, even though the newer uniforms have changed from what they actually were at 1917.

The first real challenge with the photoshoot was that I was just moved into a new apartment, we didn’t have a studio available at the moment or any other place to shoot the photos, and all my stuff in the boxes and furniture were stuffed in the living room – where we were supposed to shoot.

So, I cleared a small space at the corner of my living room where we could fit the chair. Our backdrop was simply a black sheet hanging from the ceiling and we blocked some of the light coming from outside with it at the same time.

Because we had an idea to create images that would have some kind of cinematic and oldish feeling combined to a little bit darker and moodier look that I love to do, the lighting setup was pretty straight forward in my head. Many of the darker cinematic movie looks are done with backlit lighting, so that was something I was aiming to, because I love it how the backlit movie scenes look.

The photo is simply lit with one Yongnuo YN560 IV speedlight attached to a 48 inch (120 cm) Godox P120L deep octabox, with two diffusion fabrics to eliminate any hot spots. The flash was placed slightly behind the model on the right in the picture, where the lens flare is coming and aimed little bit towards the camera. The softbox was so close that it was just barely out of the frame because we wanted the light to be as soft as possible, and as you know, the closer the light will be, the less power you need and softer the light will be.

CONTINUE READING…