Michel Engelen: Traces of David ...

First of all I want to wish you all a very prosperous 2011 and thank you for your support!

A few weeks ago a got a question from Steffi de Greve if I wanted to do a shoot inspired by the work of David Hamilton, Steffi did not know that I have a project running that I called "Traces of David".
I know David Hamilton is a bit controversial but I like the ethereal look emanating from his work and I put a lot of effort achieving some techniques to deliver this look and getting it out of cam without to much of post-process.

In the studio we build ourselves a little ethereal looking bedroom, curtains hanging down and used a lot of light comming from "the wrong side"

Her you can see Cindy preparing the model and my laptop with the pictures because I shot these series in tethered mode, this makes it easier for everyone involved to immediately check the results

This is the result from the bed with all the light coming from behind, because of the enormous surface the light is coming from it is extremely soft and there is an amazing wrap-around quality

Posing done by the amazing Elisa

The next shot involved a curtain again but this one had embroidery in the form of small little flowers

First things first, getting the styling and hair right

Checking the light with Steffi

I know it's not sharp, this is because i had to use manual focus in combination with the Hamilton technique in order to get the soft focus like pictures out of cam and the person taking the picture had absolutely no clue what this focus was all about :-$

And coaching the model.

Steffi did not only do the coaching but she also proved to be a talented make-up artist!

To give us this result:
(remember that all the light is coming from behind)

Next!

When I saw Elisa comming in the studio I quickly decided we should do some beauty like portrait too!

The cloth was pretty heavy and didn't stay in place very well so there was a lot of fiddling with it, also from me