Nick Fancher's Blog, page 23

Shadows and Simplicity

I love the brutality of hard light. Especially when used with a high contrast black and white treatment. Subjects emerge or recede into darkness. Features that might otherwise be missed are accentuated. Everything is stripped down to shapes. All too often I overcomplicate my setups and run the risk of missing the essence of my subject. When I can make myself slow down and simplify, that seems to be where I mot often find truth.

Waiting, Watching

When I was teaching at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops last August I had the fortune of sitting in on a presentation given by Tony O’Brien. During the talk he discussed his photo series, Light in the Desert, wherein he spent a year living with and photographing monks in a monastery. He described how he had waited seven months before he even picked up his camera to take a picture. He wanted to earn the trust of his subjects before attempting to capture their image. It absolutely blew my mind. That level of patience and intentionality is unheard of. No one had directed him to wait that long. No one was watching him to make sure he captured his subjects with honesty and integrity. It was apparent to me that this is the way he lives his life and in turn also carries out his photography work.

All that is to say is that I’ve been working a lot on modeling my life after a slower, more intentional way of living. That said, when my model Farhia arrived at my studio for this shoot we sat and chatted for about 45 minutes before I picked up my camera (it’ll take me a while to work up to seven months). The shoot took place on New Year’s Eve, making it my last shoot of the decade. These last few months have been a time of great self-reflection for me. I’ve gone back through my Google calendar all the way to 2009 in an effort to remember what I was up to ten years ago. I’ve gone through my email archives to remind myself of all the clients I’ve had the privilege of working with. I’ve even revisited (and re-edited) old shoots to see how my work has progressed. To say that me and my work have come a long way would be an incredible understatement. Across the board I am learning to be more present and act/create with more intention.

The shoot started how most of my personal shoots do. I told Farhia to bring a few outfits with her and that once I see what she brought I’d come up with an idea of how to approach lighting, etc. She arrived in a rust-colored dress and long black coat, which I immediately knew I wanted to shoot against a green backdrop. She mentioned that she’d want to add a headwrap to that look so we should shoot it last in an effort to keep her hair in order. So we started with her in a black turtleneck, which I chose to shoot with a hard light and dark shadows. I lit the background yellow and lit her blue because I knew it would look great on her skin, equally inspired by the key art for HBO’s Watchmen as well as Moonlight.

After she changed tops I replaced the background gel with magenta and set up a plant between my light and the model, acting as a cucoloris. I am really happy with the shapes the leaves made on her face. For the next look I changed over the backdrop from white to green. I started with the hard light setup, this time with both red and yellow lights coming through the plant, while an un-gelled light illuminates the green backdrop. Though I loved the shots I got with that setup, I also wanted to capture her look in a simple, elegant manner. I set up a large octabox to the side and snapped a few frames before calling it a wrap. When it came time to color grade the images I couldn’t decide between a color or a black and white treatment, so I did both (the B&W treatment reminds me a bit of Herb Ritts).

I want to thank each of you for your support over these years. Thanks for reading my posts, buying my books, and sending me emails of encouragement. It really helps keep me going. I’m excited to see what this next decade will bring for me, my work, my family, and the world.

Trash Talk

These images were created during sessions with three different models. I love the variation between each of them. The textures are just so stunning. I can’t decide whether I like this series better in black and white or color. I suppose it could also work to go back and forth. Thoughts?

Making it Happen with Ho99o9

I came across an album United States of Horror by Ho99o9 in 2017 by a band that I not only hadn’t heard before but whose name I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce (it’s horror, by the way). I’m not typically drawn to hardcore music but something about their energy was magnetic. The way they merged crunchy guitars with trap beats had stirred up something deep in me. Their messages carried messages of unification and hope by way of rebellion that I found to be especially important, given the current state of affairs in our country. I probably listened to the album 30 times over the span of a month. I listened to it as I walked home from my studio; as I ran errands; as I edited at my computer. Each time I heard it, images would start to form in my head. I had to figure out a way to shoot with these guys.

I began researching the band and saw that they were about to go out on tour and would be coming through Columbus, where I live. Whenever a band that I really like is coming through my region I reach out and offer to photograph them before the show. I tell them that if they can give me 15-30 minutes after soundcheck I will give them images to use for promotion on social media. They would also have the option to license the images for use on merch, etc. At a minimum, this approach gets me creative images of musicians for my portfolio which other bands, labels, and magazines see, which results in me getting hired to other bands. As a bonus I get to meet my idols, watch them play for free, and sometimes even get free merch (win!).

And so began my internet sleuthing. I started by searching for a tour or band managers email but came up short. Next I tried their social media channels, hitting up their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter inboxes. No one responded. In a list ditch effort I hit up my buddy Jimmy, the photo editor at Revolver (whom I met through taking this exact approach with another band). I mentioned that I would be going to the upcoming Columbus show and wondered if they had any interest in doing a story on Ho99o9. I struck gold as he responded saying that they’d not only love to have me shoot a story on them but they wanted me to go on a three-city tour with the group, shooting both photo and video.

In the time between when the story was greenlit and the actual show dates, Revolver had asked that I also shoot portraits for a different story that they were doing on Ghost. So now I was now scheduled to fly out to LA to shoot a cover story on the Grammy award-winning artist. This meant that I’d miss the Columbus Ho99o9 date, but would catch up with them at their Kentucky date, a couple of days later.

Add to that, I had also recently signed on to teach a two-day lighting workshop in Atlanta with Zack Arias. These three gigs all butted up together, creating an 8-day marathon of sorts. This meant that I would need to pack enough gear to teach a lighting workshop, execute a cover shoot, and shoot a video documentary. Thankfully I have my gear pared down to a small, portable kit, and everything fit into a single suitcase, carry-on and camera bag. This included two light stands, two softboxes, two camera bodies, two lenses, three strobes, projector, and a whole lot of AA batteries. Oh, and a few changes of clothes.

The workshop went great. We had a lot of fun at the sold-out workshop, and I made a lot of new friends in the process. I even managed to squeak in a test shoot one evening. The first leg of the marathon was wrapped. The next morning, my assistant Seth dropped me off at the airport before he headed back to Ohio. I boarded my flight to LA and began concepting the Ghost shoot. The editor had said that I could do whatever I wanted as long as it incorporated color. He explained that while other magazines would likely be depicting the musician in darker scenarios, more commonly associated with the metal genre, he wanted to capture the artist in a more colorful light (no pun intended). I jotted down a range of ideas, hoping that I would be given enough time to execute at least four looks during our 90-minute window.

When I landed I met my friend and sometimes-assistant Kristin at the studio and began to set up. She sat in as I pre-lit the four scenarios. Once Tobias was ready we quickly knocked out four different cover options, spending about ten minutes on each look. By the time he was out of wardrobe in the next outfit, I had the next lighting scenario ready to go. Relieved, tired, and starving, we headed out to find some Mexican food for dinner. After sending proofs off to the magazine in New York I hopped on a redeye flight to Cincinnati, happy that two-thirds of my marathon was now in the books. Because of the time change I only managed to sleep for 2-3 hours on the flight. When I landed I caught a Lyft across the Ohio border to Covington to meet up with the band. It was only noon and I wouldn’t be meeting up with them until four. Exhausted, I picked a bench at a mall food court and dozed for an hour or so, hoping that no one would walk off with my gear or call security.

I (finally) met up with Ho99o9 at the Southgate Revival House, a converted church venue just down the road. I loaded my suitcase onto their tour bus, making sure to first set up my bunk bed in anticipation of another late night. I switched over to my mirrorless video rig and began recording everything I saw. I documented their helmet shopping at a Kentucky Harley shop. I followed them to get falafel in Detroit. I sat in with them on their radio interview in Chicago. I didn’t even know what my angle was for this would-be documentary and was honestly too exhausted to even think that far ahead. I just shot it all. If I happened upon a particularly picturesque moment, I clicked over to shooting stills and snapped a variety of portraits.

Once I finally returned to Ohio, it took me a couple of weeks to mentally process everything that had happened. I began cutting together the video footage and I came away with an 11-minute tour documentary that I’m really proud of. The crew at Revolver loved the video and portraits so much that they decided to hold it for a cover story on the band, later in the year. All of this had come about from me paying attention to what the bands music had stirred inside me and not giving up until I had a chance to turn those feelings into images. The one thing that I’ve learned over the years is that if you keep at something long enough, eventually someone will take notice.

True Blue

This was my first time shooting with Hakim, an illustrator and painter from Columbus. When he showed up at me studio I thought it’d be helpful for us to sit down and chat for a bit in an effort to get to know each other and get more comfortable. We discussed our favorite comedians (Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, etc). We swapped stories of struggles and breakthroughs as independent artists and freelancers in a smaller market. We made the world a bit smaller as we compared who we knew and had collaborated with.

Going in to the shoot I knew that I wanted to experiment with multiple shadows. One of my biggest lighting inspirations is Sølve Sundsbø. Years back he made a portrait of actor Michiel Huisman that appeared to be an homage to the Man Ray portrait of Lee Miller. The image ultimately inspired me to combine color theory with the multiple light sources to come up with this image. This time I decided to use four lights, keeping three of them un-gelled and gelling one of them blue, to match Hakim’s hair.

We shot some images for my One Man’s Trash… series, while incorporating the blue.

I also used the blue-gelled light while shooting with the prism film. After shooting a few frames at a “normal” shutter speed, I decided to slow down my shutter to 1/5 and implement some motion to the images. After all, every shape in the shot (aside from Hakim) is just a reflection of the room, which is lit with ambient light. This means that I can use shutter drag to blur everything except Hakim, who is frozen in place by the strobe.