Vintage Clown – How this was Shot, Lit and build!

crying clown photography
Model: Gwen | MUAH: Ria Kooijman | Set: Me

Gwen and I have done a few shoots together. We had some free time on a random thursday. And thus we started throwing around ideas and images and came out with Vintage Clown. Clowns are creepy and vintage once even more so.Now that we had a clear idea on what we wanted the character to look like.

It was time to create the environment the character would be in.

To give it a circus feel i wanted to have a set that looked like an old circus tent. Or at least in my head circus tents are red-ish with white stripes.
So we used an old orange tarp they use to cover stuff when painting.
And painted it with white stripes. Used another one as a roof suspended by rope and tripods.
And strung up some party flags.

Circus set buid photography
I also wanted some hay bales on the ground. But couldn’t find any in short notice.
So wound up shooting more above the waste.


Case of the mondays

Lighting:

Main light was a Elinchrom BXRi 500 into a 100CM Deep Octa coming from camera right top.
I used a Canon 430 EX II as the spot in the back with a Full CTO on it and Honl Grid. right behind model.
Back light Elinchrom RX One with Reflector and Grid pointed on the roof. Camera left behind model.


Into each life some rain must fall. But too much is falling in mine.

Lighting:

On the second shots I placed the Canon 430 EX II to the right of the camera behind the model. Pointed it at the flags and used the flag as a gobo to project the shadow behind the model.
Just makes the background a little more interesting.
The main light is still the Elinchrom BXRi 500 into the 100 Deep octa coming from camera right top. And i turned off the back light.

Processing:

I wanted to tarp to look a little more red. So in photoshop i used Selective Color Adjustment tool to shift the color from orange to red.
With curves I brought out the blue in the shadows. And accented the yellow in the highlights.

Team:

Model: Gwendolyn Post
MakeUp/Grime/Hair: Ria Kooijman
Assistant/BTS Photos: Juliane Falk