The Plan
I had this idea of a model cowering under a shower of glowsticks. During my clubbing photography days at dontstayin.com, I knew for a fact that glowsticks can look wicked on a picture, especially when you drag the shutter to a second or more (no problem in clubbing photography; the more swirling lights, the better). I wanter her kneeling on the floor, looking up and scared - with loads of glowsticks raining down leaving multicoloured trails.
In theory, it was easy. Do a 3 or 4second exposure with the camera on a tripod; get the glowsticks raining down; fire the flash at the end of the exposure to capture my model. Easy.
Err.. not quite..
Ouch!
Before I actually go ahead with a shoot, I like to practice. When a shoot involves someone other than me, I always rehearse it - that way I feel more confident during the actual shoot. So, I nailed our black backdrop onto the outside of my house, put the Canon on a tripod with a wide angle lens, and had a 550EX in slave mode (triggered by the Canon's ST-E2 wireless remote transmitter thingy) pointing at where I was going to kneel.
The first thing that I discovered, before I even cracked one glowstick, was that Canon Speedlites won't switch to second curtain mode when triggered remotely. Shit. I wanted 2nd curtain because I needed the flash to fire at the end of the exposure, meaning the glowstick trails would appear behind the model and Martha wouldn't have to hold the pose for the entire exposure.
The only workaround was to fire the Speedlite by hand. Luckily, I was able to hold the ST-E2 transmitter and push its Pilot button. This fired the 550EX.
One problem solved, but it meant that we'd have to time the exposure manually. Not good.
With that problem sorted, I cracked a few glowsticks, set my Canon on timer with a 4 second exposure, got into position and threw the sticks up into the air above my head. Let me tell you: glowsticks HURT. After receiving a few painful blows to my bonce, I fired the flash.
The results were good. In fact, they were really good. And with the final shot having loads more glowsticks than I'd used for the rehearsal, we were onto a winner!
The Model
I'd seen pictures of Martha Simms on Louie Banks' photostream on Flickr. (His pictures are incredible by the way.) She has a boyish look to her but models like a pro. Long legs, an amazing 'straight' face and good with makeup. I dropped her a line and after meet over a coffee, she was sold.
Martha brought with her two friends, Elin and Eleni, fellow students who also happen to be kick ass photographers. I felt old! Anyway, after explaining that E & E would be responsible for showering us with plastic from a 1st story room, we got straight down to it and started with some test shots.
Pollution
Unlike the night of my previous test shots, this evening was blighted with a uniform blanket of low cloud and, due to Brighton's pretty intense light pollution, everything was lit orange. This meant I wasn't getting the blacks as dark as I wanted. I decided I'd have to fix that in post-production.
After we'd pretty much got exposures right, the girls let loose with the glowsticks. Lauren would gather them all up in a bucket and send em back upstairs. Hard work. Martha modelled perfectly. I was looking for that sheepish, kinda worried look and she knew exactly how to do it. I was very impressed!
The Result
Well, it turned out pretty good. We tried a few different poses and even shot one of all three under a brolly, with about 30 glowsticks bouncing off
of it. My favourite (crouching) is going up on our wall during our upcoming Open House in May. I'm quite chuffed.
This was one of those ideas I'd had in mind for a few months. I sat on my hands, umming and ahhing about it. But once I'd gathered the courage to approach a stranger to model, the experience was awesome. I've now about 6 other shots I want to create and nothing's going to stop me.
Andy
