Moon Warriors
Posted on August 20, 2008 - Filed Under NB Videos, Nigel Barker Today, Photography, Studio NB, Travel Shoots
When American Photo Magazine approached me to shoot a story for their first ever Fashion Issue, I knew we had to do something rather special. Lets face it, American Photo is a photographer’s magazine and not somewhere you normally go to get fashion tips!! So I decided to try and do something that to my knowledge has never been done – shoot a fashion story using moon light alone. Now the use of moon light to get dreamy, surreal looking photos is nothing new to professional and amateur photographers. But what you normally see are landscapes or still life images not models wearing fashionable haberdasheries.
So for those of you who aren’t photographers here’s the scoop: In order to expose your photo properly using only moonlight you need to have shutter speeds of up to an hour long. Well that’s pretty tough to nigh impossible for a human to stand perfectly still for that long. Also you really need to shoot around if not on a full moon to maximize the amount of light you can use. Shooting at night without the use of strobe equipment or the sun also means it is very hard to know what kind of shadows and highlights you have not to mention really difficult to focus!! To make it even more interesting I wanted to shoot it digitally. Well all digital cameras until just a few months ago could only expose shots for up to 30 seconds, not nearly long enough for moonlit photos. Luckily for me I was able to borrow state of the art photo equipment that hadn’t reached the market yet to experiment with.
For this photo shoot we decided to do a field test so that when the actual shoot came around we’d be ready to roll. I picked Montauk as our location and Marcus (my first assistant) and I headed out loaded with cameras and coffee for a 2 day test shoot.
For the actual shoot we had to cast extra special models and luckily Rootstein had just the looks we were looking for. Of course it was the first time my models arrived in several pieces and bald! Our make up artist (David Tibolla) and hair stylist (Stephen Ramsey) had to devise new methods to apply their craft. I am talking about mannequins of course and Rootstein make the best. Regular models couldn’t stand still for the time we needed, not to mention we were going to be shooting swimsuits and sheer dresses on Montauk beach in February……..
For the actual we shoot my whole team drove out to Montauk for 2 nights in February right over the full moon. Not any full moon either but a full moon that had the first total eclipse for several hundred years! Talk about timing……. It was about -10 degrees on the beach and windy to boot. Our models went into hair and make up at about 4 pm each day so they would be ready to shoot by 8 PM. When you shoot with such long exposures the light creates colors you rarely see and anything that moves even the slightest amount appears to melt in the shot. Believe it or not, it was pitch black even with the full moon most of the time.
Please visit www.studionb.com to see the whole story or if you’re in town Bloomingdales Downtown (that’s the one in NYC’s Soho) is holding an exhibition of the photos from the 5th of September for the duration of Fashion week……….
Comments
5 Responses to “Moon Warriors”
Leave a Reply
When does the fashion issue hit the stands? Love to see those pictures… and unfortunately I have just left New York last week… so no Bloomindales in NYC for me…
Pictures looks great… I especially like the last one….
the photos are absolutely gorgeous but in my mind the beauty of many of them is reduced by how grotestque the mannequin looks. is this really how women are expected to look? pencil thin legs? jutting collarbone? maybe this is high fashion but it is not realistic. there are many women who are infinitely beautiful who will never fit the high fashion mold.
When I saw your self portrait on the cover with the remote in your hand I just knew there would be good pictures inside.
The moon shoot was fabulous. I especially liked the one with the grouping of models on the edge of the water. Using them instead of real models was a genius idea. I mean, who can stand perfectly still for ten minutes!
** there is also some editorial message in that shoot, I believe**
Your work is wonderful.
This is the first time I’ve heard of moonlight as only the available light used. Maybe I’ll try to do that soon when I’ve got a tripod and a better (read expensive) lens.