TECHNICAL DETAILS
The Crone of Burntside, 2019
Sony A7iii
Sony Zeiss 16-35 f/4 G OSS
ISO 100, 16mm at various exposures, blended
Godox AD200 strobe in a 38″ hexagonal softbox
SHOOTING THE MIND’S EYE
Through millennia in Greek, Balkan and Middle Eastern lore, the crone has been the archetype of feminine wisdom and knowledge in her age. As the last aspect of the Triple Goddess, she completes the spectrum of human experience from Maiden to Mother to Crone. The word crone comes from ‘crown’—the mystery of life encircling her head. A teacher, a midwife, a channeler of the forces of nature, she guides us into, and ultimately, from our earthly bounds.
I have worked somewhat frantically over the last couple of months preparing for the showing of the Creative Spaces project at The Phipps Center for the Arts. In doing so, I’ve been so absorbed in capturing the style of environmental portrait I’ve employed for the project that I’ve been shooting little else. And to my astonishment, I’ve been thoroughly taken with the process. And as the shooting part of the project concludes for now, replaced by the frenzy of mounting and framing, the creative side of this style has been brewing in my mind.
I’ve been ruminating for a while on beginning an exploratory series of portraits of family, captured in some rather allegorical scenes, painterly in the treatment. As I was up at the cabin last weekend, my sister-in-law, Sharon, presented a perfect subject to begin this with. She is the Lady of the Lake personified, a force of spirit with clear and deep connections to Burntside Lake, where her family has had a presence since before World War II. I had in my mind’s eye casting her in the role of the Crone, not the scary kind, but harkening back to the true meaning of the term, which is the embodiment of feminine wisdom and power.
I saw the image as mysterious, and clearly it had to have the lake in the shot. The perfect outside setting is actually right in front of their deck, which has a spectacular view from high above Burntside. I wanted a shot at dusk, when the light would be coming from the direction of the lake, and thought I could balance the dimming with a lantern to highlight her face and cast a little warm glow on the immediate surroundings. My concept for this had her in a cloak or a cape, something to enhance the atmosphere of the shot. But, lacking such around a cabin largely stocked with puffy down and GoreTex technical wear, I asked if she had a blanket. This was produced with a little rummaging in a closet, along with a scarf to serve as a closure as we played with the blanket inside prior to shooting.
As the sun lowered and the light cooled outside, I went outdoors to lay out the shot and capture the background and sky to use for the final image. Wide angle was a must to bring together a deep depth of field and enough of the foreground, so I chose the Sony Zeiss 16-35mm zoomed all the way out to 16mm. I imagined that to balance everything appropriately I would need to use some extensive exposure blending, at minimum, and maybe would need to composite her into the scene. After doing the background captures, I had her take up a position on the leichen-covered rock as if she were walking, with Leigh holding a 38″ octagonal softbox with a Godox AD200 strobe high camera left, and my brother camera right keeping an eye on things. Just to add to the ambiance, it was drizzling rather heavily, and I had to keep the camera, on a large, heavy tripod, under cover. It took a few adjustments of the strobe to get the exposure tuned in camera, and then I asked Sharon to hold up a small, inflatable LED camping lantern. I had her look back towards camera left a bit, with a neutral and inquisitive expression, which she pulled off perfectly! After about a dozen or so exposures, not only was the rain picking up, but I knew I had the raw material needed.
In post production, I found the right background shot to use that brought out the drama in the cloudy, brooding sky that evening. An eight second exposure with a four-stop graduated neutral density filter brought down the clouds and increased their contrast. The exposure length brought movement and lent an eerie feeling to the scene. From the selected shot of Sharon, I blended her in with a straight mask. Having been careful not to move the camera between the background images and those of her, masking was easy. Finally I began color grading, dodging and burning to bring out the light and the effects of the lantern. Then I used the Orton effect, applying both screen and Gaussian blur layers and fine tuning their respective opacities. I masked Sharon’s face, hands and parts of the blanket out to keep her looking sharp and natural. Lastly, I created an overlaid high pass filter layer and selectively applied the sharpening to some facial and robe features with an inverted mask.
The final image very closes matches what I had initially envisioned for the image. To me, one of the most rewarding experiences when shooting is when you can pre-visualize a complex scene, and then actually bring that image from the mind’s eye to a finished work that realizes the vision.
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