Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom
on AdoramaTV.
I'm Ruth Medjber and today
I'm joined again
with conceptual photographer
Jason McGroarty.
Thank you for staying with me.
In this part of the show
I would love to know more about
all the technical side
of how you do what you do.
In particular, I want to know about
the cat and how you get the cat
into the outfits
and what the outfits are made of.
The costumes themselves
sometimes are
easy to make.
So it could be like a loose fabric,
might be a shirt
that's already constructed
and I'll rip it apart
and hand stitch it back together,
which I'd never done before,
I just decided to jump in and do it.
Some of the headpieces
I've done,
I've done a Viktor Rolf
inspired piece,
where it's made
completely by scratch.
So there's lace, cardboard,
everything.
It's a massive headpiece on the cat
and she sat there
no problem.
What a trooper!
What about the Jedi one?
That was just some old robes.
One of the biggest critiques
that I get is her eyes
turn different colors.
Her eyes are like a bluey/brown/green
but I notice when I'm using
a warm lighting, the green
comes up in her eyes.
It'll reflect in her eyes?
Yeah!
If I use the blue lighting
the blue will come up in her eyes
and it's really powerful.
You notice it straight away.
Do people think that it's a
different cat or something?
Yeah, different cats is the big one.
Then I construct different pieces
from old fabrics
lying around the house,
gather them all together
and I would build up
a portfolio
of what I'm actually going to do.
So there would be scheduled shoots
that we need to hit
and working with a cat then
you can't really say,
"Right, Tuesday morning we have
a photo shoot now, Hummus.
Sit down."
Give her a roster for the week.
Get yourself ready.
All the props and backdrops
are all handmade,
so they're customized for each
individual shoot.
Before we went to New York we did,
like, 'The Cat of Wall Street'
shoot and so
I found myself
it was the night before
we were leaving to get on the plane
and I'd all
my cash converted into US Dollars
and it's about 2am at night,
I find myself
"making it rain"
on to the cat.
Every once in a while you have
to take a step back
and ask, "What am I doing?"
What about lighting then, how
would Hummus be lit?
I hand built the studio
that we use for her.
So it's actually the kitchen counter
in my house
at the moment
and the backdrops
are all handmade.
The lighting that I made
is handmade,
it's like cat sized softbox lighting.
It's made out of a shoe box
a stretched t-shirt.
So a shoe box,
that you've cut a hole out of
and put a t-shirt over for a diffuser
and then do you just put a lamp in it?
You can use lamps
or you can use an
LED light.
Then it's lined with aluminum foil.
There's a little bit of a
paper layover on top just to diffuse it
a little bit better
because the fabric is hard
to come through.
She's such a good cat.
I feel like I know her
because I've been, I've been looking,
I've been pawing through your book.
Please forget I said that.
She has her own book, which is amazing!
It's a really beautiful layout,
it's a gorgeous book.
I even like the foil printing on it.
I love this book.
I definitely feel like I know her!
When did you release the book?
We released it last year.
I teamed up with the guys
at Michael O'Mara and Lucy O'Mara
and they published the book for me.
There's 32 images
in the book all together
and each individual image has a
different theme or costume ideas.
You must spend hours building stuff!
I spend more time planning
than shooting.
So as long as you know
what you're getting into,
then you're able to mix
and match when
you're actually there.
You give yourself more freedom
when you're
actually in the studio shooting it,
or if you're out on location
shooting it.
Then in your non-Hummus life,
when you're doing your Totem series
or the new series
that you've got coming up,
what kind of gear would you use?
I've used the very
same gear that I've always had.
So I started off with no camera,
borrowed a Nikon F4,
then when I got
my first camera
it was on my
21st birthday.
I got a D3100
with just a standard lens kit,
18-35mm
and that's what I used for years.
I just use whatever I have,
as long as it takes photos,
as long as you know
how to work lighting.
Your composition is a big one
and think about your visual narrative,
and what you're actually doing.
Once you have those things
done you're fine.
I tell people that all the time on this show.
I don't replace the camera
when you know
everyone says I should replace it,
I'll replace it when it's dead
and it doesn't
work anymore.
Now my phone has more megapixels
than my camera and I'm OK with that.
Megapixels!
As long as they compress well,
as long as you've got your lighting right
it's all fine.
I would use the same
camera now at the same time, the 3100.
I recently upgraded
I got the D600.
So I've upgraded to the first of the Nikon
brand which is going into full frame.
So it's like an introduction to full frame
and I use a crop sensor,
35mm f/1.8.
Cheap and cheerful.
In terms of the post-production,
would you spend,
it looks like you spent an awful
lot of time on your computer editing.
No, I actually try
and do as much in camera
as I possibly can.
So I'll shoot and do whatever I possibly can
to make it look good in the camera.
If I look at it and it looks fine, that's great.
Then I bring it over into Camera Raw
to make any adjustments.
I have a horrible tendency to over-blow
my highlights and recently,
with the upgrade
to the D600,
it's got horrible color fringing.
Especially with the crop sensor lens.
So I would adjust that in Photoshop,
there would be little tweaks
and things that I would do.
Mainly I just shoot in camera,
try get as much done as I can
possibly do in there.
Photoshop is for your extravagant elements.
If, for instance, in Totem
I had to slice three images together,
I can't do in Camera Raw.
And lightsabers and stuff like that,
we don't all have lightsabers lying around.
That's really cool!
I love your approach to it,
it's just really natural, really tactile.
You're building stuff
and you're making a cat
sit there with treats,
it's brilliant! It's so refreshing to hear.
I can't wait to see
your next projects,
if you're gutting fish
and doing bits and pieces.
Yeah.
I think for anyone watching then,
if they don't follow your Instagram
or Hummus' Instagram as well,
they should really get over
and do that now!
I can't wait to see more.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank's for that.
Well that's all we have time for
in this episode.
I hope you enjoyed the show.
If you'd like to brush
up on your own photography skills then
check out the Adorama Learning Center
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Thanks and I'll see you again real soon.