Creating a little horror

Doing My master Photographer Association homework, is one of the small bonuses of lockdown. Conceived as a way of keeping members active during lockdown, the homework is a word, which we have to intemperate and shoot.

The homework for this week is ‘tools’. With the judge saying for us to use our imagination. Now, when I think of tools, my next thought goes to horror films. Tools are a staple of many a horror film, with films such as The Evil Dead 2 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre being famous for chainsaws, Driller killer famous for an drill, as weapon of choice and of course, the axe in The shining.

So I thought I would create my own horror movie still. The first thing was to find the appropriate tool to use, which meant going exploring, in the shed. I am not a massive, DIY guy, in fact, there is a good chance that any time I try to do fix or build something I will either hurt myself, break the thing I am trying to make or burn down the house (fortunately, I haven’t done the latter yet).

So. after rooting around, I find several tools, which look appropriate (word to the wise, never upset a gardener). I found an old rusty axe, a pair of sharp looking pruning shears and a hack saw.

I then had to decide, how to shoot the shot.

Originally, I decided to shoot at 58mm. this would allow me to get my face and the threatening object in frame but I soon realised, I wanted the image to be more disturbing and that meant getting closer and wider. Going wider has certain advantages, you can get really close to the lens because you can close focus and you don’t get much depth of field. So you can keep the object and face in focus.

I decided to shoot on a black background, because it just feels right. I initially started with the axe but it just didn’t work as well as I had hoped. It didn’t look big and nasty enough, so I added the shears. Then finally, decided to just go with the shears. They looked nasty enough and I could get really close to the camera with them.

Lighting wasn’t that complicated. I wanted shadow, which all good horror movies have and enough light to light my face and the shears, which would have to be held at a certain angle to catch the light. I decided to use a beauty dish with my key light, adding a grid to really focus the light. Because I was so close to camera, I had to have the light off to one side high 45°, which also gave me Rembrandt lighting. I then added 2 grid’ed strip boxes as my hair lights, one either side.

The key to getting the shot though, was to get the manic facial expression (which disturbingly, comes quite natural to me). Getting the look was quite easy but framing turned out to be a bit of a pain, I was so close to the camera, that often the shears or I would going off the edge of the frame. Also getting the angle of my face to look menacing, took quite a bit of time.

Editing wasn’t too hard and I knew what I wanted. Black and white is a classic for horror films, with greats like Psycho and Frankenstein all being iconic. I follow with the film look, cropping the frame to make it more cinematic. I did most of the edit as normal in Capture One Pro, enhancing the shadows, through contrast and clarity. I then transferred the image into Photoshop to finish, just tweaking a few things and removing a couple of unwanted hairs (fluff) from the shot.

Camera: Nikon D800
Lens Nikkor 16-35mm f/4
Shutter speed: 1/125
Aperture: f/20
ISO: 200
Lighting 3 x Bowens X-MT500.

This was quite fun to shoot and took up much of an evening. I am not sure the image is prefect, it may have been framed a little too much, with me on the right but that isn’t a big issue.