Investigations & Searches

I have been working on a series which spawned from this photo shoot about a man, his home, and his fear. The photo was edited into a large-scale diptych which allowed viewers both the pre and post moment of an event (something which is present in almost all of my work). This work acted as a bridge piece between my generalized cinematic trope tableaux and my work focusing on processes.

On Location

This shoot provided a great jumping off point for more work that would focus on a scene in which people would be searching. Details & story would be kept to a minimal and would be provided solely by place and performance rather than a series of photographs functioning as a de-facto story-board. These were shot in Huntington Beach, CA and featured a great performance by our actor Scott. I had planned to shoot at dusk but due to production issues we got delayed by just enough time to barely miss our initial window. However, because we had a backup plan for just such an issue it meant that plans would have to be modified slightly. Thanks definitely go out to Jessica, Tim, and again to Scott who all worked hard to make sure we got the image we needed in just the way I wanted it.

Gear & Tech

For this scene I shot on both digital 35mm and film medium format. The digital was used, as I generally do, as a polaroid test camera. It is used to test light, angle, focal length, etc. Then I swapped it out for my trusty Mamiya RZ67 which was using the 110 2.8 super sharp lens. Each image was then scanned using an Imacon scanner which provided a 70 megapixel image. Lighting was done with four strobes. Light modifiers ranged from large to small softboxes, umberellas, and plain old reflectors. The final images you see are composites which of course presented a whole host of issues just for that.

Here are some closer views of the photos.