When the challenge was announced, I was dumbfounded. What the heck kind of an image could I possibly---BANG! It came to me almost immediately and practically automatically. Perhaps because of all the strife being reported in the news and the arguments happening on FB... It seemed pretty clear that the arguments were fairly divided along the faith/reason lines. The image seemed to automatically create itself in my mind. Now all I had to do was find two wrestlers!
But I couldn't find any. I contacted all sorts of organizations but never got a response. Then I reached out to some of my previous models, and they didn't know any wrestlers. I was getting frustrated. And concerned that I'd have to cancel the shoot.
Then it occurred to me that they didn't need to know HOW to wrestle, but they needed to LOOK like they were wrestling. And muscular! So I asked two of my previous models if they'd be interested. And both said yes! Yay! Shoot was back on. I was also going to need a couple of assistants (needed some cloth-throwers!), and got two on board right away.
Sent out confirmation email with all the details of the shoot. A few minutes later, one of my models contacted me saying he wasn't comfortable with the concept and was passing on the shoot. About an hour later, one of the assistants sent me an email that they'd gotten a job.
Back to despairing. I contacted numerous models on Model Mayhem, but nobody was available. I couldn't find another assistant either. It wasn't looking good...
Thursday I did a last ditch mailing effort on MM and lo and behold, got 3 models willing to do the last minute shoot. Then I texted a friend of mine to find out if she'd be in my neck of the woods to help. She was!
Shoot was going to happen after all. Except...
I was going to shoot outside because I needed a lot of space. My studio is small and with two guys, and two assistants, didn't have much room to maneuver. Plus I wanted a dirt ground. And fog. But mother nature had other plans, and between the rain, the howling wind, and the cold, we were forced indoors.
The hardest part about this sort of shoot is coordinating the flying cloth with the shutter release. And when you have TWO people with flying cloth, it's REALLY hard to synchronize. My assistants were killer :)
Lighting was one overhead with a beauty dish on a C-stand. And one on the floor in front of me with a strip box.
I wanted a really epic, classic - even Biblical - painting look, and I'm pretty happy with the results, although I think the banners could have been a bit larger, and the Reason one might be difficult to read. This would have been SO much easier in Expert :)
Congratulations on your excellent result for your equally excellent image, and thanks also for the synopsis of all the hard work you had to go to in order to create the image, we are all indebted to you.
This is very allegorical and symbolic of the troubled times we are living through. The pose of the two men is very dynamic and your splendid choice of lighting has defined the physique well, especially of 'faith'. That same lighting generally works well in defining the most important aspects of the image to good advantage amongst the predominant darkness which in itself is equally important in making the image work as well as it does. I would imagine it was difficult to decide on the right pose that gave both equal emphasis whilst still looking authentically combative, I would say you have achieved it well. I can also imagine how hard it was to time their falling cloths with the shutter to achieve the dynamic result you needed and again I would say you have achieved it well.
The only minor criticism I would voice concerns the effect of the lighting which has given emphasis to the white cloth making it stand out quite significantly from the rest of the image especially in relation to the red which also given it smaller size is comparatively insignificant. The same lighting is also causing near blown highlights on the left of the reason banner. I would suggest that some dodging on these two aspects would correct this minor problem.
I would say you achieved your goal of a biblical scene and your comments about the banners are relevant but I would say they do not adversely affect the end result. It's good to see that it has been so well received in terms of votes and comments, very well done Johanna, another to proudly add to your massive roll of DPC achievements!
Very interesting but this looks like it might be Expert and not Advanced...if you did pull this off within the Advanced ruleset, count me in for the tut.
The Struggle
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