Manchester based professional photographer | Neil Downie

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Boundaries Part 7

This is the final image I'm doing in this series for a while. It's part of my A-level coursework, and I feel that I've got enough for the time being. Some are far from perfect, and I'd really like to do a few again, and have ideas for a few more. However, it's time to call it a day as far as the coursework is concerned, and get the workbook & prints sorted out.
So for the final image, it was very interesting to hear & see people's reaction to the topic and the image. In the interests of ambiguity, I decided that in this image, I didn't want any faces in the frame. So I decided to place the female model on the ruffled bed with just her legs showing and the male leaving the room with his back to the camera. I put one SB900 in the corner of the room, camera left diffused and angled towards the top corner of the room so that it reflected back into the room. I applied a couple of red gels, though I had a devil of a time getting the room to turn red when the flash fired. If I put too much power through the flash, then I tended to end up with a pinky colour. If I reduced the power from the flash, then I got red, but not a great deal of light. I tried adding another red filter, and this helped a little, but not much. I then put another SB900 and a shoot through umbrella outside the room aiming in to try and silhouette the male. I also applied some red filters to this light. As you'll see from the image below, which is straight out of the camera, I've had to do quite a bit in post.



Lighting setup:

The crime in case you are interested was rape. As soon as I told people this is what I was doing, there many reactions voiced, the majority of which were of a shocked and disapproving tone. Had I said that the scene was murder, then the reaction would have been totally different. Just an observation.