What a mess we made

A few days ago we posted a blog entry with our Fluid Females series. And we got quite a few questions about it, mostly “how did you do that guys?”. Some people thought we used some CGI (computer generated imagery) for the liquids or maybe gels. But I have to disappoint those. It all was real, we really used milk, water, coffee & wine for this series. Well instead of wine we used cherry juice, the color simply worked out better, but you get my point. But first things first.

The idea
Peter had already a few of the models in mind that he wanted to use and they were very different. While brainstorming we came up with the metaphor of the different liquids. We discussed a few solutions, including CGI, but we wanted a natural result and decided to go for the real deal. That meant of course making a mess in the studio. So we went out to buy some milk, wine & coffee.

A litte side step
Let’s not forget that the main theme of the shooting was still the hair. And a few remarkable make-overs took place for this shooting. Especially Annika (water) looked totally different in the morning compared to the Annika on the final photo. She came in with long hair and sleepy eyes. In the end she had short hair and was shining through the camera. I am afraid she will kill me for posting this but have a look at the shot below that was made to set up the light. Hard to believe that’s the same girl, right?

Not only Annika but actually all the girls went through quite some transformation as you can see, for instance, from the shots below of our coffee girl (Tamara). Pretty easy to see why such shooting easily takes more than a normal working day, isn’t it?

Let’s start the shooting
We figured that we would not be able to get the desired result in just one shot. Chances would be fairly low to get exactly that shot where both the liquid splash and the model’s pose would really come together. So we opted for dividing it into steps. The basic idea was simple; first we shoot the hair and then the splash. Probably a few splashes to have enough material to work with. And then we would put it all together in photoshop. Sounds easy doesn’t it?

Finding the light
First step towards it was finding the right light. We came up with a set-up consisting of three lights and a reflector. The main light was a large softbox pointing towards the ceiling. This also gave us some light on the top of the hair. A strip light provided the contour light from behind. A silver reflector was used to throw back some light on the models face and brighten the shadows. And last but not least a spot with honeycomb was pointed onto the background. In this case just the grey wall. Having grey walls in the studio comes in handy a lot of times we noticed.

Getting the basics
Getting the right shot to work with later was not as easy as it sounds. The models had to move millimeter by millimeter, shot after shot. While every time trying to get a good expression on the face. And Olga tortured them by having to move into absolutely impossible and painful positions. Well it’s all for art, isn’t it? After this basic shooting the photo was chosen which would form the basis for the ultimate end product.

Let’s make a mess
After printing the chosen photo for reference we started preparing for shooting the fluids part. We covered the floor with some big plastic sheet and got the towels ready. The girls undressed and so did I, partly. As I was the one who was throwing the fluids it splashed back quite often. Peter was also standing close by with the reflector so he also had to take off his pants. It was a peculiar sight, 2 men in their undies throwing drinks onto an almost naked model. Several towels were needed as after each shot the model had to be dried and cleaned. It made the shooting pretty time consuming.

A few notes on the fluids
Milk was probably the easiest of the four we did. Because it is a bit thicker and coherent it created a nice film over the body. And because it is not so transparent it was easy to use in the post processing. It also created a very nice contrast on Maria’s chocolate brown skin.

The coffee was not too difficult too. The only big problem there was the smell. We used cheap instant coffee for it, and boy, did that stink!

The wine gave us and the model a bit more trouble. We ended up actually not using wine but cherry juice. The wine gave us a not so desired brownish result. But the cherry juice gave us exactly the red we wanted. For the model this was not exactly the most desirable fluid though, it took a few days before the color was completely off her skin.

Water gave us the biggest headache of the four. In total we had three sessions to get to the final result. We are not sure why but cold, ice cold water gave the best shapes. Much to the delight of the model. To get the water more visible we used writing ink to color it blue. In post processing we used both the normal and the blue colored water.

And then?
Well and then we spent a lot of time post processing. For each final photo we used 4 to 6 shots of the splashes. We tried to minimize the amount of transforming the splashes to keep the light as natural as possible. Of course we had to clone and clean quite a bit but we really wanted (and managed imho) to get to a very natural final result.

So did we make a mess? Oh yes we did, in the studio. But we think that all the time, effort and mess was worth it. Peter for whom we did this shooting was very happy with it. And so were we. I hope this article answered a few questions and inspired a few of you. Nothing is impossible. You have an idea? Go for it!