Thomas David - Dust and Motion
Thomas David’s Dust and Motion features a variety of academic dance poses (focusing on ballet )and martial arts, as these have very beautiful dynamic movements: a dancer’s elegance and a martial artist’s precise and empowering moves. The subjects are always centred, which provides a basic composition onto which the elements are added, providing a flexible framework.
Flour and Fight |
Flour and Dance |
The effect is easily achieved with the right settings, particularly the shutter speed. In order to freeze these moments and capture the detail of the dust, the shutter speed must be considerably high. Thomas David used a low ISO of 50 to compromise the shutter speed which was at 1/200th of a second, which then gave an f-stop of f5.6. With these setting the photograph is still sharp but the flour and background are more out of focus, providing depths to the shots. This also steers the gaze towards the subject. He also used three light stands, a 50’ Apollo JS softbox, a three Lumopro LP160 flashes and large quantities of flour. The cameras he used are the EOS 5D MK II (a camera regarded to be the best suited for professional photographers) with a canon EF 135mm f/2L lens.
In order to capture the motion, he needed a dark background providing contrast to the dust, making it visible. The light was set up so that ambient lighting is underexposed by two stops which has the effect of darkening the background, successfully directing our attention to the subjects and dust. For highlighting the silhouettes two flashes left and right were used, and to keep details flash in a softbox on the right was used. He also used a speed light as since it has a short duration it freezes the flour. Finally, the back lights are at ¼ power, but the front one is full. As for the shoot, the way in which it was produced is very interesting. First they did a few test shots where the assistant threw flour as the models moved, gradually building up the amount until the desired effect was reached. Then the models were given flour to hold: the assistants put flour in their hair, on their arms as well as their shoulders and fans. The photographer then counted to three, upon which the models executed the rehearsed moves, with the camera triggered at the right moment, as the first picture is the only one with light from the flash box as it must recycle. Missing meant having to start again. When two models were in the shot, timing and synchronisation was key but difficult. One must flip their hair or move their arms whilst the other performed a different move. In some cases the photographer had to compose the shot, by shooting the subjects separately and editing them together in Photoshop. Finally, there is the post-production process. The first step is merging both shots, which David claims is easy to achieve, as the camera was on a tripod and the flour clouds are easy to combine. Then the image is Photoshoped by altering luminosity and contrast by sections. The most challenging editing was the background and flour, as they must be worked on separately, since the flour is transparent. The last step is to change the colour of the clothes, done by selecting and changing the precise section of clothing. ResponseThis
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Dust and dance is the indoor series, shot in one Thomas David’s rooms, which has a tiled floor. The backdrop is vertical and narrow, around 0.5 metres large than the model on each side, and it is black to provide the contrast needed for the flour to be distinguishable.
Again the same camera was used but this time with an EF 50mm f/1.4 lens, as there is less zooming required. The settings fro the camera were lower this time as the location was indoors thus less light is coming in. The shutter speed was 1/125 thus slightly slower but still fast enough to freeze the model’s movement without motion blur and the flower, and of course there is a smaller depth of field as the background is black. The f-stop is 5.0 abd the ISO is at 100, due to the black backround. Two lights are used this time, an LP160 at ¼ power in a 40x60 softbox (to the left and behind), and an LP160 at ¼ power in a Lumodi Beauty dish (stronger light, to the right and behind) There are also flags in the room to avoid the light ‘spilling onto the background and directly into the lens’. Cactus V5s were used at triggers. |