As fast as possible, Breakfast please. (Shoot BTS)
How it all Began
For the past two weeks, I've been ruminating on some ideas. I stumbled across this video called "Breakfast Interrupted" a few years ago. Recently, I stumbled upon that same video again and had an idea for a portrait image.
Being tired of watching ideas die on my floor, I wondered how fast I could make the image come to life. This time, I wanted one week from start to finish, but as with many things, From conception to photoshop took three weeks.
Took one week to sort of work out the image itself from sketches and trawling through the internet. Another two weeks before all our schedules lined up. I originally wanted the table to have flowers and more fruit, but I felt that since my goal is a portrait, I wanted to avoid too much clutter.
Fair warning, this is a long post, so I've provided a tl;dr in video form at the bottom of the post.
The Shoot
Most of the items were acquired at my local Savers to keep costs down. All in all, the whole shoot was no more that 30AUD, 20 for the sacrificial dishes, and 10 for the food props (which also conveniently formed my breakfast the next day).
My amazing sketch...
The original setup, a plank of wood resting on two bench legs. Russ' F100 sits with a 50mm on it that he let me use to see which lens provided a better composition. This was taken at 24mm.
Russ kindly leant his backyard for the shoot, so we didn't have to worry too much about Orange juice flying everywhere.
I was especially excited because I really wanted to light this image with a shoot-through umbrella. Forgot mine, but Russ had a spare, the perks of having photography friends.
First image trying to decide whether to balance ambient or not, because the sun was going down fast, I decided to rely completely on strobes so I wouldn't have to worry juggling the two sources constantly.
I felt that the background wasn't right, so we moved the table a little further aft. This is when we began the lighting tests.
Trying out the good old Joe McNally tungsten gelled orange and teal trick. Quickly became evident it didn't really work.
Composition was a bit of an issue for me, to put it short, I wasn't feeling it. I knew that I wanted Russ to be where he was sitting, so I thought I'd try to tackle a little bit of the lighting challenge first to clear my mind. I had three Nikon strobes at my disposal, but consequently a large area to light, which was my biggest technical concern. As the test image above showed, I quickly ruled against a hair light, I felt it didn't really fit, it also freed one more strobe to do background lighting which helped.
The moment it all clicked. After this, I quickly changed to an 85mm.
It's called a portrait for a reason, so I let go of the landscape orientation and low and behold, the composition was fixed. This fixed two technical issues in the process, less background to light, and the umbrella can come in closer and above the subject, where I personally enjoy it the most.
Let the actual shooting begin:
The shoot was two stages, first, the portrait of Russ. Then, the actual elements flying. Russ had a dinner to attend, didn't want to make him messy. Initially, I did want him smiling, but we tried some stoic expressions, and in my heart, I felt it worked better, I like the idea of a contrast between a busy environment and a calm subject.
The first few frames had Russel with his arms resting on the table, I thought in the back of my head that this would result in an editing challenge later, so I asked him to do some more poses with his arms by his side and holding a mug. All of these shots, maybe ~50-100 in total gave me options for expressions and body posture.
Some of my favourite frames from the portrait portion of the shoot:
Now for the messy bits. At first, I thought of stacking all the elements on the board and simply dropping everything onto the table legs. This proved to unpredictable, so it it was simpler to resort to tossing or dropping each element individually.
I bought two of everything, but the only fatality was one of the cereal bowls landing on its side. The orange juice was the most difficult to get right, but in the end, after getting one image I was pleased with, I asked Rondo to drop the glass from twice the height and filled right to the top, that did the trick to get the nice big splash seen in the final image.
Post and Finishing
After the shoot was done, cards were dumped and Photoshop was fired up. Initially, I planned on a fixed position montage, simply brushing in the elements with the portrait of Russel as the plate.
Unfortunately, some of the elements didn't balance anymore, the cereal if placed in its original location would be far too distracting and would have unbalanced the frame. Luckily, Photoshop had just gained a new "Focus Selection" option, which, from what I understand, can make selections based on what is in focus and whats not. The cereal flakes were all within a thin plane of focus, so the new focus selection worked a charm, I simply had to only draw to mask out the flakes saving me hours of manually masking by the pen tool.
I did have to extend the placemat so that all the food could fit on it, luckily, the cereal and toast hid a lot of gaps, meaning I only had to copy the edge of the placemat.
My worry about the image was that it would end up too orange, but after adding in an orange circular flare, I felt it warmed the image but didn't overwhelm it either.
Here's a layer breakdown of the image:
Thats a Wrap
This was an awesome shoot, and it was great to see that one of my ideas came to life so quickly. If I could do the shot again, I would have ironed the table cloth so that I didn't have to brush out the creases in post. Maybe get Russ a nice button up shirt, but honestly, I'm happy, and I felt that I made my idea into tangible reality. Overall, this is one of those images where it was great fun with friends, great fun to put together, and something I'm extremely happy with.
Every piece of work could be better, and I'm always my harshest critic, but once in awhile, you're just pleased, content and at peace. This is what it means to be an artist I guess. (sounds wanky, I know)
More t.k.
