- Hi, this is Jay P Morgan, and today on the Slanted Lens, we're shooting at a little
airplane museum in Utah. We're going to take a look at a cost-effective way to
shoot vintage portraits.
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I have been shooting a portrait series I
call "Time Period" for a couple of years now. It's an art series that allows me to
look back and help people lived their lives in past times. I really love history
and this gives me an opportunity to live in a different time period if it's only
just for a few hours. I go in and research the time period and create portraits that
I feel look like they were taken by me as if I was there with my camera in that time
period. It's really about the people and what they were feeling at that time. It's
really a fun process, but it can be a very expensive one. Shooting different time
periods mean that you need to have props, wardrobe, and locations that fit that
time. This is gonna drive the cost way up if you're not really careful. So here's
how I've been able to overcome that cost factor. Number one, I look for museums
that have props, whether they're large props or small props. In this case, the
air museums specialize in World War II and had two planes in their collection. They
also had a great selection of clothing and hand props that people had donated to the
museum. Some of that clothing, they allowed us to use. This solved the props
and location problem. It's kind of a tricky process so when you're shooting
with a museum. Some are going to allow you to use things and some are not. It's
usually smaller museums that are funded by individuals that really give you this kind
of access. A lot of times I do have or make a donation to the museum to help
cover the cost, but try to keep that as reasonable as possible. Number two, I look
for re-enactor groups to bring into this process. You know, there's groups all over
this nation that recreate different time periods. They buy and they recreate, they
sew the clothing so that they look period correct. I try to find these people and
bring them in the shoot. This gives me great access to clothing that's been
recreated for the time period and looks a little more new than some of the old
things that people have in the trunk for a long, long time.
Remember, this is not about old. This is about seeing people the way they were in
that time period. So re-enactor and LARPer groups actually are a great source for
this kind of work. Number three, I do use wardrobe houses form LA at times. You
know, when we shot on the USS Constitution Julene pulled all the master and
commander wardrobes she could find in LA to take back with us. That really helped
out, but it was pretty expensive. We try not to do that very often. But in a pinch,
you can rent the wardrobe you need from wardrobe houses like Warner Bros here in
Los Angeles. They'll ship it to you. Number four. For the location, I use a
place where props are located. You know, I don't have any choice when you have a
plane or a ship. You kind of to shoot at it where it's at. In the case of the
pioneer shots, we did that shot out on their property. They had 360 acres of just
virgin land. It looks just like the pioneers would have seen it as they came
across on their wagons. So it was really great to shoot out to one of those grassy
hillsides. For the planes, I use a lot of smoke to cover up things I don't want to
see in the background. I also fill the frame with the plane or the wagon or the
prop in the foreground, then I get slightly down so I'm looking up into the
sky and that get rids of most of the stuff I don't want to see. So there's a very
simple formula for shooting these kinds of vintage portraits. For today's vintage
portrait, I wanted to look at a World War II fighter pilot. The plane at the
background is a Texas trainer, so he's just learning how to fly. In World War II,
we lost more pilots in flight training than in combat. It was a sped up process,
it was kind of fast and very dangerous, so I wanted to show the man who is feeling
the courage to be able to get in that airplane and try to learn how to fly. We
pulled the airplane onto the tarmac outside the hanger and I placed it so the
sun would come in from camera left. I wanted to see the mountains in the
background. Well, you know what? It started to snow and we weren't seeing
anything in the background After a while, the snow kind of started to break up, the
clouds started to break up. We could start to see the mountains and start to see the
clouds. Here's our first shot after the snow stopped. This is just with the
ambient light we had on set. I'm shooting at F4 and 125th of a second. The ISO is
set at 100. I get a good ambient reading here, which allows the airplane to fall
just out of focus a little bit in the background.
I like that look. Using the Baja B4, I'm going to add an octozone with the grid
from camera left. I love these Bajas. Just the battery portability makes them so easy
to use. I'm not carrying extra power around or having to run cords. It just
makes them very easy to use on location. I then added a second Baja B4 as a rim light
on the camera right side. It's little broad in this image on his face, but we
pushed it around a little bit so it's more of a rim and not so much on the front of
his face. So that became our lighting setup for most of the things we did that
day. We did use a reflector occasionally when the sun was too harsh to take the sun
off from his face and that allowed our key light and our rim to keep doing their job
without too much fill on his face. Here's some of the final shots before editing. We
also had a couple there. We did her up in some great vintage hair and clothing.
These are shots of her with the airplane, a couple with the airplane, and then the
guy alone. In the editing process, Julene cleaned up their eyes and did a
little bit of work on the faces, but then she added a nice curves adjustment to
increase the contrast. Then she added a gradient map adjustment layer, turned the
opacity down to 50% to desaturate the color just a little bit. That makes it
look a little more vintage. The final step for the vintage color look was to add a
sepia color filter. Then she did a high pass layer just to sharpen the image a
bit.
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Here are some of the final images with the editing.
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It was a lot of fun to be transported back
to World War II for just a few hours, to be able to see the airplane, to feel the
clothing of the people and be able to do some vintage portraits. So there's a quick
look at a fine arts series we call "Time Period" and the process we used to get
there. So keep those cameras rolling. Keep on clicking.
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