Jeremiah Tolbert

This was my first seri­ous shoot with logis­tics involv­ing a model, cos­tum­ing, and a shoot loca­tion. To spend an hour and a half behind the cam­era, I spent prob­a­bly 4 hours doing the var­i­ous admin­is­tra­tive tasks to set up. Here’s an overview of the process we went through to get the pic­tures I wanted.

The Model

A cou­ple of weeks ago, I posted a gen­eral cast­ing call on a site that con­nects pho­tog­ra­phers, make-​​up artists, and mod­els called Model Mayhem. I received quite a few responses, but most of them were from mod­els in the Denver area, which pre­sented logis­ti­cal prob­lems. I offered $15 an hour as my rate. I received prob­a­bly a dozen or so inter­ested responses, and I con­tinue to receive responses over time. Michelle was the stand-​​out of the group, and also, was local, a huge plus.

The prob­lem with a site like Model Mayhem is that there tends to be a bit of homogeny in the look and age ranges of the mod­els. Many, if not most, of the mod­els are young women in their 20s. This is fine for some of my needs, but I also need older mod­els, and male mod­els.

I chose Michelle because she expressed a strong inter­est in steam­punk and had some port­fo­lio work involv­ing bits of period cos­tumes. She also had some vibrant, inter­est­ing (but not super anachro­nis­tic) tat­toos that really helped her stand out from the crowd. I imag­ine tat­toos might be a prob­lem for some mod­els, but with me, they add char­ac­ter, and char­ac­ter is exactly what I am look­ing for in my models.

The Costuming

Once I knew the model I wanted to shoot, I next moved on to sketch­ing out in my head what kind of char­ac­ter I thought she could play in the Roundbottom sto­ry­line. I’ve been work­ing on a sto­ry­line involv­ing a ghost that is related to steam, and so I struck upon the idea of a steam­punk mechanic–someone who lit­er­ally works around steam engines and such. I handed this con­cept off to Sarah, my cos­tum­ing god­dess, and we bounced around a few ideas, select­ing items in our col­lec­tion that would work as parts of the cos­tume. We used a top and a vest from Sarah’s col­lec­tion. I surfed the ads on Craigslist and lucked out. I found a pair of 1890s pipe wrenches for $20, and bought them in half an hour, dri­ving far out into the coun­try to pick them up. As you can see from the shots, I think they were cru­cial to the char­ac­ter concept.

After about a week of going back and forth and try­ing to sort out sched­ul­ing, we met with the model on a Sunday after­noon at a local cos­tume shop called Wear it Again Sam’s, to assem­ble the remain­ing pieces. Michelle brought along her boyfriend, who also enjoys steam­punk, and who I want to use in a future set. You make con­nec­tions in the odd­est places. Anyway, we tried on a vari­ety of hats, gog­gles, and a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent skirts until finally, we had what we thought would be the final cos­tume. Total cost was $30 worth of boots and hats to pur­chase, and a $15 rental fee on a 1903 wed­ding dress skirt, to be paid on the day of the shoot, when­ever that would be.

Now that we had the model picked and the cos­tume assem­bled, we just needed a loca­tion. This proved to be interesting.

The Location

I knew imme­di­ately the ideal envi­ron­ment for the char­ac­ter. Steam tun­nels, or some­thing along those lines. I wanted an old fash­ioned boiler room. I wan­dered around Old Town, ask­ing var­i­ous busi­ness own­ers in old build­ings if they had base­ments. I looked at a cou­ple, but PVC pip­ing has taken over, and I just couldn’t bear to have that stuff in my shoot.

I was about to give up and try some­thing else when I wan­dered past an empty brew pub build­ing. Through the win­dow, I could see these great cop­per brew­ing tanks, and all kinds of shiny metal pip­ing. It fit the bill per­fectly. I wrote down the realtor’s num­ber and com­pany and went back to a com­puter to see if I could find an email address.

I wrote an email, explain­ing what I wanted to do, and offer­ing to pay if nec­es­sary, to use the space. The real­tor, Ed, was more open to the idea than I dared dream. He thought that the space was a bit tight for a shoot, but offered to let me in and look around. We met the next morn­ing, and sure enough, the space was quite tight and dif­fi­cult to move around in, but the equip­ment was a per­fect back­drop, so I asked if I could use it. He agreed to let me use it, but tim­ing was a con­cern. He didn’t want to have to be around to let me in at the time that I could get my model and cos­tumer together. After some talk­ing, he quite sud­denly gave me the pass­code to get into the key­box and get into the build­ing. I don’t know what inspired him to trust me, but I was ecsta­tic. I now had my loca­tion for the shoot, and it had cost me noth­ing but the brav­ery to write a stranger and ask.

The Shoot

With some hasty sched­ul­ing, I secured the model’s atten­dance and bribed Sarah into com­ing along. We set up in the nar­row space between the retain­ing wall and the brew­ing equip­ment. Lighting was my first con­cern. The angles were incred­i­bly lim­ited. I ended up plac­ing a strobe on a stand with a shoot-​​through umbrella on a metal plat­form where the con­trol panel was. I posi­tioned the model next to a set of inter­est­ing look­ing pipes with glass see-​​through pieces. Then I set up a bare strobe on my left, and I tried a few angles to keep the stacks of kegs out of the back­ground, or at least to keep them in a loca­tion where I could eas­ily paint them out.

With about 15 min­utes of exper­i­men­ta­tion, I had my setup and my lights at the lev­els I wanted them, and we com­menced to shoot. I had a few idea for poses I wanted, but Michelle gave some great ones with­out my suggestion.

The only tech­ni­cal prob­lem I ran into was with my Cactus II radio trig­gers fir­ing ran­domly, some­times 3–4 times in a cou­ple of sec­onds. I’m not sure if it was all the metal around or what. They fired when I trig­gered them on pur­pose, but I started to worry that the extra trig­ger­ing that was hap­pen­ing would dam­age the strobe. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to have done any last­ing damage.

We shot for about an hour and a half. I paid the model for her time in cos­tum­ing and the shoot. Total cost there of $40. At the end of the shoot, we packed up quickly, signed a model release, and took the model home.

Post-​​Shoot Thoughts

So my total cost for this shoot, not includ­ing my cam­era equip­ment, was about $100, and around 6 hours of my time in total, before con­sid­er­ing the post work I will need to do. I worry that unless I make a big splash with the renewal of the Roundbottom site and the fresh con­tent, I won’t stand a chance of mak­ing back that money. Still, it’s a tax deduc­tion no mat­ter what.

One change I will try to make in the future is to do more research on poten­tial loca­tions. Also, I need to do a bet­ter job of sched­ul­ing ahead of time. Michelle was very accom­mo­dat­ing, but she didn’t have to be. I’ll def­i­nitely work with her again, and I’m hop­ing to make her char­ac­ter a big one in the cast because of how great she was to work with.

I need to make a list of the types of shots I think I might want before I go into a shoot. About half-​​way through, I was run­ning out of ideas, and really, the model gave me some of the best shots, and I hadn’t really thought to ask for them. I have a lot to learn still about work­ing with mod­els. If they all end up being as easy to work with as Michelle, then I’m going to be a very lucky photographer.

I may have to invest in some­thing other than the Cactus trig­gers even­tu­ally. Up until this point, I have had no prob­lems with them mis­fir­ing, but most of that shoot­ing has been out­doors. Pocket Wizards are way too expen­sive. I’ll be look­ing for a mid-​​range solu­tion, per­haps the cheaper Radio Popper model that I’ve read about.

I think that the real work is going to come in fig­ur­ing out how to posi­tion myself bet­ter in sell­ing Roundbottom prints. Who might buy these kinds of things? I’m not totally cer­tain, but I hope there are a few peo­ple out there. I’m look­ing into Etsy and a few other places as ways to get the word out. I’m also hop­ing to do a local show in a gallery or cof­fee shop at the end of the summer.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Sarah, Michelle, Ed, and the fine folks at Wear It Again Sam’s. Without you, the shoot would not have come off as well as it did. Thanks again.

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Tags: michelle, Photography, roundbottom, steampunk, strobist