Featured Photographer – Tim Skipper

1. Tell us a bit about the image

The image was inspired by the movie the Cell. The visual graphics of someone with massive flowing silk got stuck in my head. To do the shot I contacted a model friend of mine and brought her to the garage of my house. For the red “silk” I purchased some cheap red bedsheets from a local Walmart.

2. What inspired you to take the shot?

This like many of my images is often inspired by books, movies, comics, and videos games that I may consume in a period of time. Visual images get stuck in my head and I have to create them in order to get them out of the way mentally. I don’t really have any deep philosophical idea just an image that I think, “Hey wouldn’t it look cool if…”

3. What gear did you use for the shot including lighting?

I started by placing my camera on a tripod with an extension arm and raising it as high as it would go. Then using a step ladder I photographed the model from a stable position. My light was a single Alien Bee in a large 60″ reflective umbrella with a diffusion panel that was placed at the model’s head. After going through several poses we settled on this one. I had considered doing this as a nude on silk but decided to cover her at the last moment. Once the shots with the model were complete I left the camera where it was and photographed the sheets folded and moved in different configurations over and over again. It was important not to move the camera or light so that the shadows matched. At the time I used a Canon camera and this was shot on an original Canon 5D with a 24-105 lens set at 24mm.

4. Tell us about the editing process?

I couldn’t get the hight I wanted so to make my subject small the first thing I did in post-production was to enlarge my canvas size with the crop tool set to a 1:1 ratio. Then I began selecting images of the sheets I had photographed and pasting them into layers. I had to keep in mind my light direction so that the shadows all fell correctly so I couldn’t rotate or turn the sheets. Then when I had filled the canvas area I used layer masks and the clone tool to blend it all into one giant massive red bed. To get the silk look I selected the sheets and adjusted the color and saturation until I had the deep red I wanted. I also had to select her hair and copy and paste copies of it to create the fan look in the final image. Thankfully she had long hair so I didn’t have to create too much hair.

http://www.timskipperphotography.com/