The Concept: Sin City Femme Fatale
Model Louise Hoppel portrays a Sin City femme fatale girl hiding behind a brick wall. This dramatic portrait is part of the Sin City photo session. The photo session was inspired by the movie Sin City and organized by Megan Alter‘s workshop series. The photo session took place in the Haarlemmerbuurt neighborhood of Amsterdam. As part of Megan’s team of instructors I was responsible for teaching photographic lighting concepts to the participants. However, in addition to participating as an instructor I had the chance to work as a photographer and to develop my own work.
For my personal work I drew inspiration from the film noir and neo noir cinematic styles. These are characterized by low-key lighting, hard shadows, dark tones and black and white photography. In order to prepare for the photo session I spent some time watching the movies, studying lighting patterns and lighting techniques. In addition, to help develop my ideas I study the characters and their stories in both movies.
Scene and Lighting
My vision for this portrait was to create a night time street scene that evokes mystery, danger and seduction. To acheive this I staged the scene on the sidewalk, near a street corner. There was a street lamp that provided all the light in the scene. However, the quality of the available (artificial) light was not good enough to create the shadows and the contrast I wanted. So, my solution was to enhance the existent light with that of a flash. In other words, I wanted to simulate hard light streaming from a street lamp. Because I didn’t want the key light to spill over the background I decided to focus the main light using a grid. This allowed me to focus the light onto the model. Moreover, using a grid on the main light allowed me to capture a bit of the texture on the wall.
The key light was a Nikon SB-910 speedlight. Because I wanted to create hard shadows I moved the main light away from the model. This made the light effectively small. I positioned the key light on the right-hand side of the model’s face. After positioning the light and tweaking it to my taste the lighting setup was complete.
Finally, to set the mood for this portrait of a Sin City femme fatale I asked our wardrobe specialist to dress the model using a leather jacket and a necklace. When composing the image I decided to take a headshot of the model instead of a full-body shot. I was also careful to keep the wall in the scene as I wanted to use the lines to direct the attention of the viewer to the model’s face.
Model: Louise Hoppel