Sometimes something is on your mind for weeks and months and it makes you restless until you realize it. Ever had that? I did with Double Gravity.
A few month ago we eventually put the idea into pixels and shot some video footage for a Making Of video. BTW, if you want to ruin your favorite track I highly recommend using it for a video.
For those who already checked out the Making of pictures this could be some nice addition. For those who haven’t but always wondered how to dump stuff off walls and frame it, here’s the answer.
(Switch resolution to HD for fullscreen view.)
Last year in summer I shot a portrait of Uwe Behrens who is one the founders of the hip-cult beach cafe Buhne 16 on Sylt. I’ve spent many awesome summers at this magical place and I have been one damn lucky guy that I got the chance to meet and to know Uwe and his brothers. In Germany they are also known as the fathers of surfing as they were the first ones to stand on a surfboard when they were still working as life guards before they opened the cafe together. He is still telling the story when some 200 people were standing on the beach watching them “surf” for the first time when they had their first real surfboards shipped from France to Sylt. That man is a living book.
A few years ago their experiences and stories were finally put together in the movie “Die Väter des Wellenreitens”. You can find the German trailer here.
As the cafe is located right by the sea in the middle of nowhere he, his two brothers and a small number of well selected members of the “fish gang” are driving out to fish everyday once the season for mackarels has started. Since the first day, which lays probably some 30 years back, he writes into a little book to keep track of every single factor just as wind directions, wind speed, weather conditions, fish caught, men on board, you name it. When I thought about the portrait and how to photograph him it became clear straight away that his book would be in it.
As I set the light up and shot a few test frames I saw that the ambient light did not have enough power to rim light his right part of the face. I didn’t have a reflector or anything that would’ve helped with me so we used a body board that happened to be in the room. Et voila! It worked perfectly.
I used a SB-900 as commander on the camera to trigger the other two SB-900, one in the softbox as group A and one behind the chair as group B. The flash behind the chair is firing against the lockers to soften the change from the light grey tone of his pullover to the darker grey of the lockers.
Uwe’s wife told me that he usually hates himself on pictures but that he loves that one. Maybe that gets me into the fish gang one day. I’ll let you know.
