Fokofpolisiekar.
The song ‘Tygerberg Vliegtuig’ inspired me with the words
‘skaap mentaliteit’ (1:23).
Translated it reads ‘sheep metality’, and this is exactly the mentality of our
society today. This immediately reminded me of all the hype thats been going on around Blackberry
smartphones. Almost every second Tom, Dick and Harry has one today and if you dont, you are either
a social outcast, a loser or you hate Blackberry.
This has become a trend that is followed especially by young girls today.
My shoot will be themed by this mentality, with 5 young, trendy girls having a picknick outside in a
beautiful nature setting. All five of the girls will be too busy on their Blackberries to actually enjoy the
picknick for what it is. There will be a plate in the middle with some dried grass and two of the girls will
actually have grass in their mouths like sheep. The picknick basket will also subtlly reveal Blackberry
boxes inside. This is ‘sheep mentality’.
The girls are a group of friends I know, that truely follow trends like sheep! I asked them all to help me
out for this shoot and they all gladly agreed. Their makeup was done by themselves before they arrived
at the shoot. The location I chose for this theme, was a medium sized open field across from Varsity
College in Westville.
Because of a tight schedule both me and the models have, a small 3 hour window was available to
shoot this scene. This was between 13:00 - 16:00. The shots I took that is the final photo, was at 14:00.
This is not the most ideal time of day, as the sun is quite harch, but it worked out very well.
I positioned the models in such a way that the sun won’t be directly in their faces and it actually gave a
nice rim lighting effect on the models.
For additional light, I used my build in flash and a reflective panel to reflect more light onto the models.
I was going to use a car battery operated light, but because of my hospitalisation, I couldn’t get hold of
one in time. The refecting sunlight looks very natural and probably works better anyway.
Images:
Here is where I was trying to get the correct settings on my camera for the scene and I played around
with some settings
Once I was happy with my settings, I had Andrew Fouche help me with the reflector.
This is when the sunlight is refected back at the models and with added camera flash.
Additional composition I shot just as a back up.
Best shots I considered for the Final Photo.
Just before Final Photo.
Final Photo:
Combining 3 photos, I created an HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo.
EXIF info:
Camera: Canon 500D
Aperture: f/10
Exposure: 1/80 + 1/125 + 1/200sec
ISO: 200
Focal length: 18mm
Planning and Diagrams:
Rough Sketches of what I had in mind for my photo:
Diagrams of the lighting for the photo:
Using ambient sunlight and car battery
operated strobe light.
Using ambient sunlight, the built in
camera flash and a silver reflector to
reflect the sunlight.
Behind the Scenes:
Some photos taken by Andrew Fouche and Vaughan Marais
Special thanks to:
Trevlyn Makkink
Shana Makkink
Lauren Berndt
Sinead Buckles
Kristy Wawa Grant
