ASSIGNMENT: THE SCULPTOR IS BACK!

Last May, I posted about an assignment showing sculptor Pèter Orbàn and his work (here is the old post, for those interested); in July, I had one more session with him in order to shoot his last works for the exhibition he was preparing at the time (by the way, for all of you art loving people happening to be in the area, the exhibition is now open in Milan, Italy and will be open until October 20, 2012).

This time, the shoot took place in Milan, at the foundry he always uses to create his bronzes (this place is so interesting in itself that it will be the subject for a soon coming post!); the assignment was to shoot seven of his new sculptures and, of course, the artist at work.

For this assignment, I filled my backpack with my Nikon D3x, my usual set of prime lenses (24mm, 50mm, 85mm all f1.4 & AF-S) and 4 Speedlights (SB-910 & SB-700) to be controlled by the PocketWizard MiniTT1, FlexTT5 & AC3 system. As support for the lights, I used two Manfrotto 5001B small stands, a GorillaPod, a couple of clamps, a VAL (Voice Activated Lightstand) plus of course I had the Speedlights own footrests if needed. As a matter of course, reflectors and various light modifiers were used as well.

A teaser here, the rest of the images and of the story after the break.

Pèter Orbàn at work in the foundry, Milan, 2012

We decided to start the shooting with the sculptures, leaving the artist for last. While in our previous shooting he opted for a black background, for these new works a white background was his choice. The first sculpture is a 2 mt. high exploded sphere, planet-like, installed on a stand so that one can move it in different positions:

Details of the sphere:

For this image, 4 Speedlights were used; one coming from bottom left, slightly behind the sculpture (soft-boxed); one top right, this time slightly in front of the sphere (also soft-boxed); finally, two more to uniformly light the background. All in manual mode, controlled via the PocketWizard TT1/TT5, which made it really easy to adjust power on the fly directly on camera.

Next, we moved to the smaller stuff - for a grand total of 6 pieces:

All were basically lit the same way, using the 4-Speedlights setup I mentioned above.

One more image, of a sculpture still in progress:

For the whole shoot, the main problem I had to solve was that while he wanted the different textures to be evident and the polished parts of the bronzes to be shining and brilliant, I didn't want the specular highlights to be too prominent outside of these areas, nor to burn any parts of the images badly. In order to accomplish this, I had to judiciously use gobos & grids to shape and direct the light accordingly; Honl light modifiers and accessories were of great help in doing so.

Finally, the artist himself:

Pèter Orbàn at work in the foundry, Milan, 2012

No flash were used for this image, I just used a couple of reflectors to redirect some of the existing fluorescent light where I needed it.

Pèter Orbàn, Milan, 2012

For this last image, my intent was to raise the ambient light inside the foundry to the level of the early afternoon sun shining outside, so that the window panes in the foreground and the building outside the window behind the artist wouldn't be completely overexposed; as well, I decided to lit our subject with directional light coming from top camera left, to resemble the light fixtures available in the place. All Speedlights were gelled with CTO (1/2 for the ambient, full for the subject) to make the daylight outside look blue, thus creating an interesting chromatic contrast between the cool light of the blue frame crated by the windows and the warm(er) light bathing the artist. 

Now for the technical stuff (click to go to the related product page): for this assignment, I used my trusty Nikon D3x, equipped with the Nikon 24mm f/1.4 AF-S, the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AF-S and the Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AF-S; light was provided by 4 Speedlights (2 x SB-910, 2 x SB-700) controlled via PocketWizards MiniTT1, FlexTT5 & AC3. Photos have been developed in Nikon Capture NX 2 and finished in Adobe Photoshop CS6.

Thank you for reading this far, and see you soon on the blog! Stay tuned for more...

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