Page 51 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #1

FALCON 51

T or the other. I would focus the camera on the
ruth be told we didn’t Initially I tried lighting the subject with one
start out trying to develop a differ-
ent lighting methodology, or one that subject, then create the photo. Theoretically,
was unique to The House of NyghtFalcon. We it should have worked. It didn’t. Even across
were frustrated, stymied, overwhelmed. Nei- the short distance of a model’s face, large areas
ther JD nor I had ever used film, so we had were burned out. Never one to give up, I as-
none of the basics to guide sumed it was me. I kept try-
us. Or influence us. Or, if you When we weren’t ing. I added more candles.
will excuse my pun, “color” Nothing worked.
the way we saw things. It all photographing Not long after JD and
began with a very practical m odels, we were I began working in the
problem: Certain areas of the photographing burned-out house, we did
house were very dark, and a shoot with Katherine, a
with the camera in program w ha t e v e r young woman who would
mode, we simply couldn’t become my second muse,
get a model to stay still long we could get into after Torment. It was one of
enough to get a sharp im- the house. those experiences when eve-
age. To make matters worse, rything just comes together.
I hated using a tripod. At first, I tried to “burst Through the viewfinder at least, the shots of
through” a shot. I would compose a photo Katherine were stunning. I couldn’t wait to get
then hold down the shutter until the camera’s to the studio. As I reviewed the images I was
buffer was full. If all went well, out of the eight so upset I could hardly control myself. Almost
shots it took to fill the buffer, I might get one every one showed areas that were so overex-
that was usable. And there was another prob- posed, there would be nothing I could do to fix
lem. At the time, as far as I was concerned, this them. I couldn’t sleep that nyght. While in time
problem was far worse. In fact, it haunted me. I would learn how to fix some of the problems
in the “digital darkroom,” at this time, there
A
t first, I couldn’t seem to was little I could do. I knew I simply had to
wrap my head around it. The more I figure out what to do.
thought about it, the more it bothered One afternoon not long after, JD and I were
me. In simple terms, I would look at a scene talking and he said something that was not
and it would look fine to me. So, I would press only counterintuitive, but in the end, would
the shutter thinking I had a good image. When become the key to how we now think about
I looked at the RAW image, inevitably, some light. “Conventional wisdom” suggested that
part of it was so overexposed that there was the ISO should always be set to 400 as the
nothing I could do to correct it. And this didn’t baseline. So, of course, that’s where we set the
happen just once in a while. In the burned-out ISO in our cameras. Aside from the noise in
house it happened all the time, but it had also the shadows, the “blown out” areas seemed
happened periodically in the cemetery and on worse than when we worked in other environ-
other shoots. The more it happened, the more ments.
frustrated I became. Enter the flashlight and “I’m telling you,” said JD, “the sensor was
the 100-watt bulb. designed to be set between 100 and 200.”

nyghtvision magazine volume 3, number 1, WINTER 2013