One of the actors in my upcoming video is a go-go dancer who flies across the country strutting his stuff in various clubs and events. After a shoot for the video, we got to talking and he mentioned a desire to do a series that showcases the sights he has seen and that paths he has gone down or has seen others go down. I was very interested in this series and agreed to do this. First up was a scene involving a theme of “heroin chic”. Not a autobiographical image, but he has seen many people go down the dark paths and wanted to show it off in this series.

For this shoot, I decided to use the small bathroom at the studio. It is very textured and unique and we both felt was a great backdrop for his vision. The biggest concern I had was it was a small space and having to light it in a dark way ( yes that is a contradictory term ) would be difficult. I could do it, but it is a bathroom that is shared across tenants. I didn’t want to monopolize the space in case an overworked artist, full of coffee or “other” liquid needed the space. I had to be in and out without throwing all my equipment in the bathroom. Truth be known, I was worried that someone would pee on it. There I said it.

For the shoot I used a couple of my go to low tech options. 2 fluorescent light strips. I wanted a gritty look so I was not worried about the grain of high ISO. In fact the high ISO produced a grain that I was happy with and added to the feel of the shot. There was a frosted window in the bathroom, but the light was coming in strong so I used 2 fluorescent lights for fill and the main light. Another fun aspect of this bathroom is it has a hot water heater in front of the toilet so I taped the lights to it. I then had all the money thrown around and went to shooting.

Because this is one in a series, I only needed one or two shots. I tried various angles from different perspectives, but the final one was the low to the ground. I tried shooting above ( I never like that angle but I thought I’d try it ), one from far away, and some other angles, but, as I always say, the best shot was the one that was most difficult to get. I got on the ground, trying not to think about all the misfires that a mens bathroom could be the victim of, as well as someone in need of the bathroom coming up and seeing a man lying next to the toilet surrounded by cash and an almost empty bottle of liquor. I shot a bunch of frames, but overall this shoot went really fast. I think the make up and shoot were around an hour or so.

(cue batman spinning logo)

Back at HQ, I loaded the photos up in Lightroom and went through the usual process of removing the bad, out of focus, whoops forgot to move that trash out of the shot, missing limbs, and just ones that looked bad out. I got down to about 10 that I felt were candidates. The great thing I like about Lightroom is how fast I can get down to that final stage and once there I can fiddle with exposure, crop, apply treatments all to one photo and basically copy and paste the rest of the photos and be done. This set required more work than Lightroom has tools for so I did the final treatment and “cosmetics” in Photoshop. This is suppose to be a dark look into the life of a male go-go dancer and the raw shots were too light. The porcelain was too white and the overall image was just not dark enough. I spent some time playing with curves, color filters, and other adjustments, but came down to a simple greenish gradient ( I used the color of the bills as a source color ) and some vignette. I thought the money played an important role in this image so I wanted to apply a tint that reflected that.

After a few exchanges with Cisco, I got down to the final image. I am happy with how it came out and hope he is too. Thanks for reading. hit me up with any questions or comments.

Mel