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Jericho - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Stuart Wood Published 01/02/2016

For instance, the picture of the wonderful Clarke Peters with his horsewas taken on a miserable, dull and misty morning, yet my ElinchromRanger was employed but not to the front or side, but as a back/edgelight on Clarke and his horse at around one stop brighter. This is atechnique learned straight from working in many a television or filmdrama and studied further on the internet. I now employ this techniquewithin the rest of my photography and adore the fact that the flash isdoing very little, but is doing everything!

Less is absolutely more!

While primarily employed to shoot the action, with the aid of a veryunwieldy, heavy and awkward 'sound blimp' that houses my camera,rendering it (hopefully) almost silent, I also love to take advantage of anyspare time with the actors, during the scenes that they are not requiredfor. This is where my Elincrom Ranger comes into its own! Able to shootin any weather, it provides a studio light at any location.

With the one metre square soft-box and my trusty assistant, Amit, handholding the flash, I employed split lighting on Clarke Peters while usingshort lighting on Hans Matheson, producing an image that is 'uber' cooland with my tiny soft-box employed from the same side as the sun, butboosted a stop and a half brighter, I captured the lovely Jessica Rainein a landscape that looks little like Sheffield and is more akin to the bigskies and endless openness of the Terrence Mallick classic.

Probably the most challenging image was the picture of Hans andTommy reflected in the grimy puddle. I believe that it is called sufferingfor your art, when I explain that having realised that the best reflectionsare usually captured from the lowest of angles, I actually lay down in thepuddle to capture this particular photograph!

Both actors were in all the scenes and I could not get any access to themthroughout the day, but I also realised that having spotted a potentialwinner, I went ahead and prepared the image without them, keepingeverything firmly crossed.

Between takes, I lay in my puddle, directing the extras that would besilhouetted against my 'masterpiece' and knowing that I would never havethe time to organise both them and the two actors that I would hopefully,negotiate a couple of minutes with before the day ended, I proceeded toshoot the extras in readiness to place them into my final image.

Looking through the fabulous images that still sadly lacked our mainguys, only made me more determined to get them to give me a couple ofminutes, to a point where I was ready to sell my eternal soul to the devilhimself in order to complete the picture.

Again and again I was told that there was little or no chance of gettingthem, as they were required for filming, so I made my mind up to play myfinal card.

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1st Published 01/02/2016
last update 09/12/2022 14:55:24

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