Negotiated study 2nd Shoot

Here's an image from my second shoot for my final negotiated study images.

I feel like I'm getting a much better handle on this series now and am working with a provisional title of "Tethered", as the running motif of the series is that each subject will be attached to something with reference to the subject or everyday life, hopefully in a more ambiguous nature.

My good friend Andy was really up for this shoot which I was quite happy about as he has quite a distinctive look and a lot of hair. I decided to use hair as the motif for the image and shot him in a hairy gorilla suit and as you can see is tethered to a hair dryer. I also had him sit on some tires, and there was a couple of reasons for this. Firstly Andy is quite tall and so logistically it would have been quite difficult to position him in the shot without seeing the top of my backdrop. I also felt that it would be a nice way of changing composition within the series so that it doesn't become too similar, and also as Apes and Monkeys sit on tires in the zoo, and we are all only shaved apes after all.

The shoot itself was really good and felt very collaborative with Andy suggesting different poses to try for the image. I also shot with my camera tethered to my laptop through Lightroom, so the images would show on the screen as I shot them which would mean that I could see them in more detail than on the back of my camera. This also meant that Andy could see the shots and helped me explain more about what I liked and didn't like about his poses.

The shoots are getting easier to set up as I am generally using the same lighting configuration for the shots and the backdrop and composition is an homage to the portrait work of Irving Penn (see below).