The masses have been clamoring to get a behind-the-scenes look at my world-renowned and wildly celebrated work: “Ghosts of a Christmas Carol”. Well, that opening statement is not entirely true, but I have to build it up in my head to gather up the initiative to actually write a blog post that the mildly interested passersby might consider scrolling through.
Regardless.
The inspiration for this photo shoot came suddenly while driving home from work in the winter-darkness. The station I was listening to had a segment about Charles Dickens’ writing style. The incomplete concept that struck my mind was “high-fashion-ghosts”. Obviously, the high-fashion part was modified due to the fact that there was no high-fashion anything available at the time of the shoot.
Having been excited about this shoot, more so than previous shoots in recent memory, I enlisted the help of my go-to-model, Channing. I considered the need to have 3 separate models for each of the three ghost representations, but decided I liked the idea of the reflection of the same character in three spheres of time: past, present and future. This was convient, it meant I didn’t have to propose the shoot concept to a stranger – fulfilling my undying need to avoid most human contact.
I took the opportunity of the Thanksgiving holiday to execute the shoot. Naturally, it got pushed off until the last night I would be home. We had 3 scenarios to shoot, and we did it in 1.5 hours. It was messy, but lots of fun.
Before & After
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The Shoot
- Location: Garage
- Backdrop: Black Sheet
- Lighting: Continuous
- Effects: Window fan.
- Costumes: This and that.
- Props: Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper, Wineglass, beads & fur handbag.
- Make up: Channing Jackson
- Time: 1.5 hours.
Post-Processing
Obviously, most of the magic happend in Photoshop. That’s where I’m most comfortable anyway.
I knew I wanted each character to be shown in an environmental, wide-angle shot and one head-shot. I made the conscious decision to have the headshots be much less ghosty, but rather ghost-themed. You’ll note in the original post that the ghosts in their environments have transparent, floating bases, while the head-shots are completely opaque.
Each character required different editing techniques, of course. I have demonstrated the Ghost of Christmas Past, below:
The other characters followed similar editing processes with variations that skewed dark. For instance, The Ghost of Christmas Present was not unsaturated, largely because the present is far more vivid in one’s mind that the faded past and vague future.
I walked away pleased with the project. I don’t usually do that. Good day!
