I've done quite a few shoots since we've been in Denmark--all of them interesting and challenging in their own way. The first shoot we had upon arrival in Denmark (after the model casting) was called "A Day in the Life of…" and we contacted some of the new faces that were discovered during the casting. We asked them a bit about their life and if we could follow them around for a day or two shooting their daily activities. Keep in mind, while some of the new faces had modelled before, most had not, and here we were asking not only to take photographs of them, but to be welcomed into their homes and lives to capture it and turn it into something beautiful... and commercial. I agree that there is definitely beauty in everyday activities, but it still felt a little strange to be throwing myself into the life of a complete stranger.
The woman I shot was a beautiful 29 year-old new mother who was on maternity leave to look after her 7 month-old. I couldn't believe she had just had a baby 7 months earlier, because she was such a tiny woman and could easily pass for an 18 year old! In fact, she told me she sometimes gets charged the child's fare on the bus! At 29, that's pretty impressive! Anyway, while the other interns were photographing young professionals, students, singers, single dads, retired seniors, etc., I photographed Tanya, the maternity leave mom. The shoot went really well, though I would have loved to shoot more of just Tanya, simply because as soon as her son was in the picture, well, you can't really direct a 7 month old, so it was pretty tough. Still, I managed to get some great shots of Tanya on her own, and with her son, showing just how busy a new baby can keep his mother! In the end, it wasn't as strange as I thought it would be to be welcomed into a stranger's life; especially because I got a sneak peek at a real Danish home and family, which is a unique opportunity and isn't usually the case when you are in a different country for work.
(On a side note, there are more pregnant women here in Aarhus than I have ever seen in my life. It's as if they all got bored 9 months ago (which would make sense seeing as in the middle of winter in Denmark, there's only six hours of daylight). And pregnant women don't try to cover up their bursting bellies with loose flowing clothing either; they wear skin-tight tops and dresses bought from one of the many shops selling fashionable maternity clothing [as contradictory as that might seem]. There are some extremely young, fit and beautiful soon-to-be mamas wandering this city right now. And always a cluster of strollers ["prams" for the South Africans] at the bottom of the stairs of every apartment building.)
After the "Day in the Life of…" assignment, we had one week where we scanned a whole bunch of images from various books and publications. And when I say "a whole bunch", I mean over a thousand. Yuri (Mr. Boss Man) figured it would be good for us to have a portable image library--emphasis on the "portable" part. Instead of lugging around the hundreds of thick books and dozens of volumes of magazines, we could put it all on a very small and portable hard drive. (To give you an idea, the largest book was about a meter tall by half a meter wide and very heavy. It took two hands to turn the pages without damaging them.) We now have a digital image library of everything from completely unknown to very famous images from around the world, past and present. The end product? Very cool. The hours and hours of scanning? Not so cool. Let's just say we found ways to keep it interesting. For instance, this is what ended up happening after day 3 of endless scanning, renaming, and reorganizing: (The scanner portrait looks much cooler than the process of scanning your face, though the humour value is high.)
The next assignment we had was an unusual one: instead of being given a written brief as usual, we were given three images. Each of the 11 interns were to have half a day to do three separate shoots inspired by the three images that were given to us. We had to replicate the original shots, and then do our own take on them, and turn it into a cohesive set of images that were inspired by the originals. The three images I was given were the following:
To get that first shot, I did a shoot with a girl named Alex. She's actually from the States, but she's living in Denmark doing her studies here. I had scouted a location earlier in the week to shoot on top of a hotel in Aarhus. Actually, I'm still not sure they understood exactly what I wanted, because the only part of the top floor that's actually accessible is the balcony. However, when I was scouting the top floor of a different building the day before, I could see from across the street that there was actually a very shallow staircase (more of a ladder, really) that led from the balcony of the hotel to the very top part--probably not for public access. But the hotel gave me, my model, and my assistant permission to shoot on the "balcony" for the morning.
The weather had been completely haywire the days before the shoot, and though I was wishing for some consistency, we weren't so lucky. The 3 hours of shooting involved running up the ladder to the roof of the hotel, shooting until the rain started, running back down the ladder and waiting out the the 5-10 minutes of heavy rain under cover, then running back up the ladder with all the camera gear to shoot more on the roof as the sun came out, and going back down when it started raining again. Alex was such a trooper with all the climbing up and down and getting soaked, and we ended up getting some great shots that day.
To get the second shot that was assigned to me, I shot a 4 year-old boy named Frederik. That shoot was tough. Really tough. First, there was the language barrier, most Danish people learn English in school, and they learn it so well that there's usually no trouble communicating at all! However, little Frederik wasn't in school yet, and didn't understand a word I was saying. His mother and aunt came along on the shoot and brought his little baby sister along too. So there I was, trying to direct Frederik in English, and have his mother or aunt translating over my shoulder. And they weren't challenging directions either. They were simple directions such as "stand still"--which, I suppose, is a challenging direction for a 4 year old. Secondly, he had an abundance of energy, and a very short attention span. It was tricky. I took the example image that I was given, the little boy legs in the big shoes, and expanded on the theme of a goofy boy playing with dad's clothing. I was completely drained and exasperated after that shoot. I think it was even tougher than my messy kid shoot--and that was shooting FOUR little boys. (After the shoot, I went to go play ultimate with a Danish team I've been practicing with since being in Aarhus, and life was good again!)
The third and final photo I had to recreate was very trippy and very photoshop-based. Taking the theme of the image very loosely, I simplified it to "something turning into something else" or a kind of "melting and morphing", and ran with that idea. It was a strange shoot to try and describe to my model, Emma, what I wanted from her in the studio because it's hard to visualize the final product and how I would be using her images later in post-production. Especially, when this is what I have to show her as my reference (and yes, this is why I chose photography and not drawing):
I'm really happy with the way the final images came out, and personally, they're some of my favourite images I've done recently. They all required a heck of a lot of photoshop work, but I think the end product looks pretty cool! (Just to give you an idea, the middle image of Emma in the hot, melting environment, well, that one image took me about 9 or 10 hours in photoshop. Want to give it a go?
In the end, it was just so nice to have three separate shoots where I had a little more creative freedom and could shoot something a little less "stock-y". And it gave me a chance to play around with photoshop, which is always something I've enjoyed!
All images are property of "On Life" blog or Yuri Arcurs Photography
