Page 50 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #1

50 THE MERLOT EFFECT

I looked at the photos on the computer, reality set in. Quickly. Many of the
photos were nothing but blur, others were burned-out. Few images would
ever be used. But even that didn’t slow us down.
Over the course of the two years that we worked in what we referred to
as “the burned-out house,” we would produce more than 200,000 images
of approximately thirty-two models. When we weren’t photographing mod-
els, we were photographing whatever we could get into the house. Some-
times for hours and hours at a time. Conditions in
the house were often brutal. There were massive
holes in the roof, so when it rained in the sum-
mer, the house was filled with moisture which in
turn made the house so humid that we suffered
miserably. In the winter, the house was so cold
that our hands burned from holding the camera.
It was never easy. Never. We worked in every
room at every time of the day, often until it was so
dark we couldn’t see past the candles we used to
light our scenes. That was such a long time ago.

A
bout three months ago,
in an effort to better preserve our work,
we purchased some new external hard
drives to back up more than four hundred DVDs
(onto which we had backed up all of our work
routinely until late 2007). During the process of
checking images copied from the DVDs to the hard
drives, I had occasion to see many of our photos
for the first time in nearly six years. A number of
these images have recently been posted on The
House of NyghtFalcon website.
In retrospect, those two years in the burned-
out house were our watershed. The lighting
methodology that we subsequently developed
was the product of working under the conditions
the burned-out house constantly presented to
us. Just when we’d think we had mastered all that the house could mus-
ter, a ceiling fell...or a wall tumbled down...or the seasons simply changed.
Though the challenges never ceased, we are the better for having endured
and triumphed over them. The lighting methodology that grew out of our
experience is now the backbone of everything we do; no matter what the
subject or where we are—studio or location—our approach is derived from
our work in that house. So, how did it all begin?

nyghtvision magazine volume 3, number 1, WINTER 2013