DD was approached by the founders of new Brighton magazine, Arty, as they wanted him to be the first featured photographer in the premier issue of the mag, and oddly enough the cover image that they had used in the mock-up was one of his, that they had seen in a local gallery, North Laine Photography.
Arty Magazine Issue1
At Garage Studios, we like to support as many local artists that we can, in fact we will be hyping two of our former students with a write up soon, as they have used skills and techniques taught on several of our courses for a new venture…and if we see talent then we cant help but promote it, and Torben and Alison at Arty Magazine seem to share that mentality too. They are also as obsessed with good printing and heavyweight papers as DD himself is….. so it seems a good match.
Torben, asked DD to shoot a new cover for Issue2, a summer issue, out in August, now the last shoot he did for them turned into the epic full blown GS team involved and a whole bunch of models, a 2 day set build etc… You can see the backgrounds image here, if you missed it, and the final shot is here so we knew we had to pull off something kinda special still.
The brief was fortunately loose, and invloved summer/brighton/seaside and we needed to get an ‘art’ feel across in the image, as the mag profiles a lot of artists from sculptors to graphic designers painters etc….
Friday Midday...Teenage Lobotomy.... for Arty Magazine
DD and Emma Sandham-King had some ideas left of a melting themed shoot, that they couldnt shoe-horn into something that they had planned a few weeks back. We wanted a lot of petrol and oil based products (hey even fashion photography can have some reference to the real world…) and give a very summery, but global warming themed image. We knew the beach huts had been shot to death in Brighton, but thats cos they are pretty dope and so after a few last minute worries we decided to stick with that as a location, having checked out the most excitingly painted ones last week, and settled on orange and pink.
We ran around town together, busting through a bunch of our favourite shops (and Primark) getting as much themed coloured items as we could, bulky and plastic orange and yellows, some hot pink jelly shoes, a dirt cheap golf umbrella and the Brighton Orange ‘lobster pot’ bag, which is actually the stylists own.
We used some cheap polystyrene tiles from B+Q for the floor, trying to create a feel of ‘pixelated’ beach hut colours falling onto the floor, as this was a rushed shoot we ended up painting them on site, it was pretty windy, so we spent a lot of time running around chasing them as they flew off down the seafront. Once the tiles were down we had to hold them all in place with sticky tape and pebbles until the model was in position.
The model- as you know Elin has shot with DD a lot by now and not only is she versatile and hard working but she can throw a killa pose at a seconds notice. Emma had styled her in a vintage swimming costume from To Be Worn Again, and Janeen Witherspoon Cove, and Emma Watson worked on her make-up and hair respectively, with a lot of bold colours, and the hair was wired up to make it look windswept as if she was really running. We held the hair away from the face with a killer pink visor we found in Primark.
Elin- after the shoot
Emma poured (non-toxic, watersoluble) paint around her jelly shoes and the orange plastic bag to create the melting effect, and the MUA’s greased her legs with some extra cocoa butter for the slick summer look. We used the umbrella to blog out the houses of Hove that showed thru the gap of the two beachhuts, and ensure Elins head didnt get lost in the background.
Arty Magazine by DarkDaze Wide Shot Polaroid 340
The lighting was really simple on this as you can see from the polaroid above- tash had to stay on umbrella duty, but it still blew inside out and snapped, but fortunately didnt bring the light over. We had one Bowens 500w, barndoor camera right, about 45º at the model, with a yellow gel on it, and to balance that a 500w Bowens camera left with a yellow gel, bouncing into a silver umbrella to produce a clean zingy kinda light. We had approx f16 into the model, and the ambient light was f13, so we were able to get added punch to the clouds and sky when we shot at f16 in camera. Oh we also had a Nikon flash off camera between the camera and the barndoor light, which was handheld at shoulder height, also gelled, pointed at the models face, to get a bit more lift and light into the face, hair and visor.
We didnt shoot tethered on this but had a hunch the exposure was working, there was a pretty hefty difference when the sun disappeared every few minutes, but when it came out, everything seemed to balance, its rare that we’d recommend shooting at midday with a full sun overhead, but when your throwing light across the image like this then its gonna work just fine. Polaroid test below-
Arty Magazine by DarkDaze test shot Polaroid 340
So we did a mad dash to get all the pebbles off the tiles, but shoot before they blew away… got Elin to bust out a semi ‘running-man’ and a quick lean over to grab the melting bag , and thats it job done.
I should add we battled ridiculous wind, and some very troublesome passers by who crashed into our lights, and we had an 2 hour window from start to finish on this, but we pretty pleased, and most importantly the client loves it.
We shot on a wide angle and then cropped it heavily (DD never crops images so that bit always burns him) to get the square format of the magazine and still leave space for text…. a quick tidy up of the paint drips around the ‘pixelated’ tiles and we were ready to print for the editor by 5pm.
Look out for Arty in August.
We can shoot for you, from a small scale team like this one, or a full blown GS style, budgets vary but please contact us to discuss any aspect of what you need.
Hopefully DD is throwing it down to the beach hut shooters now, lets see who can trump this one…
