Through the Eyes of a Child This month's "Behind the Camera" is a self authored sample we gave the working title, "Through the Eyes of a Child". It tells of the simple, naïve way a child innocently finds somewhere to play hopscotch...even during a street crime scene. The police spotlights shining brightly didn't matter one bit. Since it's early beginnings, kids would play hopscotch anywhere they found a place to draw the boxes. I translated it to a visual extreme. We initially constructed a life-size human template using fomecore for the sprawled out human form. Placement of the numbered sections was also determined previous to my crew and I going to the location. Our 6-year old, Lauren Losito from "Lily's Talent" was thrilled to be part of the selection process of which toys were to placed in her playground to frame the hopscotch area. Lauren also helped putour numbers in place. Our team was having fun. The strong light from the sun casting the shadows was used in unison with our manufactured spotlights. As the day progressed, the importance of our good shadows being cast from the toys and Lauren, far out numbered the shadow coming from a city bike rack. I elected to not move our sidewalk! After removing the visual obstacle of the bike rack shadow, I continued with Photoshop for the spotlights. From the 'Filter/ Render' pulldown, 'Floodlight' was used from lighting effects. A positive intensity was used with the spot sized to fit the playground. The balance of exposure between the spotlights and the overall ambiance of the street scene was critical. My image wouldn't be complete until marrying together the day/ night scene. At the end of the shoot day everybody was made happy. The shot was possible (and a pleasure) because Lauren was a true professional,and a great really hopscotcher. But she couldn't understand why I made the number "9" backwards. I said, "what do you mean backwards"? |
|
|