Jump - behind the shot

[Richard]

Here's another one from the same session when I was shooting for this months assignment: Transportation

Bambi asked how I took this shot on flickr, so I thought I'd share:

The shot is very simple... I was trying to think of something different for the transportation brief, and started sketching some ideas on paper of someone being transported in a light beam..

I got Jessica to jump into the air, and after a few shots she forgot my instruction to keep here hands by her side and face the camera, But when I was sorting through my shots I liked the action I had caught in this shot, rather than looking like she was being beamed up, the arms gave the impression that she was jumping forward out of something...

I lit this with 3 CTO gelled speedlites, one to camera left to provide fill and two from behind to lift Jessica off the background (I made sure the light stands were out of shot to minimise any post work). Being a grey and dark day meant the speedlites didn't need to work too hard, and I used a ND filter to lower the ambient light hitting the sensor even further whilst keeping the aperture where I wanted it and the shutter speed below my max flash sync speed. I under exposed the shot slightly to allow the extra lights do their magic.

In post, I dropped in on a "screen" layer some smoke shot against a black background. (The screen layer hides the black just leaving just the smoke wisps visable, which can easily be shaped and tweaked further with a layer mask. I used a 'hard light' layer to manually paint in a bit of colour to the smoke and then painted in a vignette.

[Marko]

wonderful image Richard - i dig all the coloured lights the comp and gesturing
Thanks so much for sharing your secret recipe made from 16 herbs and spices!

[Runmonty]

Great image - You have put a lot of thought and work into this and it shows

[Bambi]

this is so incredibly amazing!

[Iguanasan]

Very cool and thanks for sharing.

[Richard]

Thanks gang.

[AntZ]

Very cool. I like the little hints of colour in the smoke.

[bucket]

All in all a very beautiful and fantastical shot. It's almost as if she has the power to teleport wherever she goes by just jumping through a colorful portal. Great photography and post production skills!

[Hillbillygirl]

Amazing PP work here Richard, love it.