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Psylocke - Shoot Breakdown
🕑 Added 2021-02-11 02:16:23 +0000 UTCIntroduction
I often think about how much time I spend talking about and planning shoots in comparison to how many shoots I actually do. My declining mobility is a reason I blame to constantly put off or delay, knowing full well my condition will only get worse. This shoot is a perfect case in point, and I didn't realise exactly how much until piecing together sources for this article. I first mentioned to Helena that I wanted to shoot her Psylocke on the 18th May 2016 (while discussing other shoots we never got to) and we actually came close in mid July 2016. I was going to be working on a shoot with Fury Fingers at an industrial concrete factory, which I thought would work as a location. Helena was free every second Sunday but unfortunately the date wasn't going to work in with it and I ended up shooting Allana’s Punisher there and Tiffany Dean’s Silk instead.
I pitched the idea again in Feb 2017 this time saying I wanted to add a motorbike, I went on to mention it again in Jan 2018 and late 2019 (by which time I had found a bike to shoot with at least) which again I delayed so long covid happened. In late 2020 I talked about it again a couple of weeks before we had a small outbreak scare in Adelaide. By this point each time I mentioned it I'm sure Helena was like “yeah, yeah sure we’ll shoot it Leigh...” Each time it didn't happen was purely down to me and my usual phobia of logistics - weather, location, transport, assistants and my own physical capability.
In early Jan I finally set a date for Sat 23rd 2021 but even then it was soon apparent that date wouldn't work either, the weather forecast was for cloudless sky and a temperature that slowly crept up to 40 degrees. Nobody wants to be in costume in that, so we all decided to hold off a week until the 30th where finally it went ahead….just.
Concept
I've always liked superheroes with simple shapes but strong graphical and colour elements which is why I lean towards characters such as Silk and Psylocke, maybe it's the splash of red both characters have. In early 2016 I’d done a X-Men shoot with Gigiren, where one of them played Psylocke and I liked the idea of playing with the red waist tassel so in post I used a stock photo of material to extend it to frame the composition.
So I was keen to explore that concept further when I first saw Helena’s Psylocke a few months later.
Helena
I’d known Helena through the Adelaide cosplay scene and we had shot a couple of time in 2015, In Feb for my Day of the Dead shoot and May at Ayers House both in the same lingerie and subsequently through her work as a mascot character for the local event AVcon.
Helena is always amazing to work with and photograph so the hope was always to plan more shoots.
Motorbike
It was probably imagery from the movie release of Logan in early 2017 that put motorbikes in my head for use in an X-Men shoot. I'd never used a motorbike in a shoot (apart from a couple of impromptu shots at a cosplay meet) so I thought Psylocke would be a good character to add as a prop for. I have a photography friend who shoots mainly performance cars and bikes and I initially enquired about any leads for unique bikes. In the end I followed my own contacts for ease of choosing shoot dates rather than organising it through a third-party. I’d done a lot of work with Aerial Artists Adelaide and in one of their shows a performer used her motorbike so in 2018 I approached her about using it in a shoot which she happily agreed.
Location
I like to use different locations in my shoots to keep them new and interesting, however being from a rather small city this isn't always possible, for example I’d use the same church doors for most of my fantasy shoots as it's basically the only option apart from using a pine forest. I’d been looking at using a dam near my house because it was an impressive location that would add a cinema quality to the shots. However logistically getting permission to put a motorbike on the dam as well as to get the shot angles to take full advantage of the location was going to prove difficult so I decided to save that for a future shoot.
My fallback was a location I'd used previously in 2017 for an Overwatch Reinhardt shoot that Mark Anthony Engels from Maetogrophy originally suggested to me. It's a carpark owned by Adelaide Brighton Cement Ltd in Birkenhead that overlooks some massive silos which would be a suitable industrial backdrop for the shoot. Hopefully we would get some similar cloud textures to.
The Shoot
I'd been following the weather all week leading up to the shoot and it didn't change much, mid-twenties and overcast. On the drive to the location which was about an hours drive from my house it was clear I wasn't going to get the cloud cover I had hoped for, in fact there was barely a cloud to be seen and even those were on the distant horizon. The shot below was taken on my phone upon our arrival and shows the conditions that's definitely not ideal for photography.
What it doesn't show is the gusty wind which kept swirling clouds of dust across the scene, and the wind was quite strong which added the logistical consideration that light would need to be held and secured by a person at all times.
We started setting up the gear and soon after Jamie turned up on her Bike and as the sun beat down and the wind buffeted us she said "I'm surprised you haven't called it yet" but I was determined we had to go ahead but I could have cried. I even debated changing location.
We set the bike up and took some test shots and it was clear my lighting plan was out the window. Helena turned up and we added her to the scene. I usually like to shoot in overcast conditions that was you can control the background and subject independently and make the images look like day or night. With the full sun I had to roll the shutter speed over 1000 and fire my most powerful light on full power and it was just able to get the light required on the face, and that was after moving the light much more into frame than I wanted. This was due to the inverse square law, where by moving the light in half the distance it doubles the brightness (this really is handy to understand in photography) but I'd moved it as close as I could and would have to spend a lot more time in post removing lights from every shot. With the sun being so bright I was backed into a corner with settings, I was using HSS to get overall scene exposure to an acceptable level, had strobe at maximum, couldn't increase Aperture or ISO as that would brighten the entire shot.
We ran through a number of standing poses, then crouching. I then asked if yes could do the classic superhero leg out poses which she was able to pull off despite the epic boots which you can see below.
We had stopped at a hardware store on the way to site and bought a 700 x 500mm Dolly (basically a piece of wood on caster wheels). It's hard for me to get on the ground and once there it's even harder for me to move once I'm there. I knew I wanted to shoot as low as possible so sitting on the dolly and have people move me as needed would be better than the alternatives. You can see this in action in the BTS shot below.
It was about this time we were approached by a security guard who asked what we were doing, which I explained. He said he was on his way in to work and would have to call it in to management when he got there and we might see him again in about 20 minutes. It's usually a mater of liability, it's their property and if someone gets hurt somehow its a headache they could do without. I told him we would follow any direction given. My stomach sank when he did return 20 minutes later but luckily said management were happy for us to continue as long as it wasn't anything offensive or lewd.
I knew I wanted to play around with the idea if elongating the tassel but this time I wanted to try and get something in camera. Again through my contacts at Aerial Artists Adelaide I had borrowed a red silk. I had photographed them a lot with the group and loved the shapes they made and the way they looked in camera and thought it was the perfect item to play with to get the effect I wanted. Below you can see some previous shoots with a red silk.
For comparison below is my recreation of the shot from 2016 using the same stock resources and then one where we threw the silk. Original out-of-camera version of both shots are also presented.
With any practical effect especially something with material (like cape throwing) every time you do it you'll get a different result some will be flat and others will be magic. Because we are firing full power the lights don't recycle fast enough to get more than one frame per throw. Its also timing, sometimes you'll take the shot and a millisecond later the material would form the most amazing shape which you've missed, you just never know. Sometimes you thrown the material and it just stays together and flops to the ground, other times the wind catches it perfectly. So we tried it quite a few times with a variety of results. We were also trying to make it look like it was coming from a particular point around the waist, were as it would often flare out and be a bit to open like the shot below, its a beautiful shape but I would preferred a narrower connection point like the photoshopped one.
From there we did a few more standing poses, here's a selection first is processed other to are out-of-camera.
Near the end we repositioned the bike to get slightly more front on shots.
It was about 6.45pm now and Jamie was able to head off while we finished with a few solo shots using the red material as purely a background in some. It was around this time with the sun getting lower we finally started getting some nice light that I was hoping would have come sooner. I tried to work a different angle to the silos but the sun was too side on to Helena's face so we had to turn round so the sun was more behind Helena again. The sun at least worked as a nice rim-light most of the day, if you look at all the shots all the light down the left hand side of Helena on the hair, shoulder, waist etc is the sun.
To sum up I definitely got some shots I love but after the long wait to actually do the shoot the weather was a big disappointment that affected the shoot and the shots meaning I couldn't get the lighting I wanted, but that's how outdoor shoots go.
We also got 90m of BTS footage so look out for some of that as well as more finished images!
Main Gear
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Characters: Psylocke
Universe: X-Men (Marvel)
Date: 30th January 2021
Location: Carpark, Adelaide Brighton Cement Ltd, Birkenhead, SA, Australia
Cosplayer: Helena Che
https://www.instagram.com/helena.kh.che/
Photographer: Steamkittens
https://www.facebook.com/steamkittens
Assistant: Leighlan
Assistant: Cassandra
Assistant: Darcy
Shoot Time: 2.5 hours
Total Frames: 248
