The story behind the Dali' Photo shoot
Channeling Salvadore Dali’
Hi again. So recently I shot a photo session of my friend Marco Bernal. Marco is a character model who brings to life characters like The Riddler from Batman to Dr. Strange. One day I expressed I was interested in doing a shoot of someone from the 1930’s era. When asked who I thought would be interesting, I replied with enthusiasm, there’s no one more interesting to me than Frida Khalo or Salvadore Dali’. At the sound of Dali’s name, Marco jumped up and very loudly yelled “Let’s Do it!”
Next thing I know we’re researching images online, scouting locations, looking for makeup and props and getting the mood board ready for the shoot. It was exciting planning for the session and trying to come up with a date, time, location and list of props to use.
Marco has a 3D printer and is very good at printing odd objects we can’t easily find in stores. We decided printing the Dali’ elephant is most likely the best way to obtain the prop we needed. It came out great! The props done and the makeup on, we began the session. The images and poses we chose were simple enough to shoot in the studio using strobe lights and modifiers. Images back them were taken with large format and were fairly harsh due to the lighting they used so we tried to emulate that look as best as possible in camera. I didn’t want to use PhotoShop too much.
We had a blast doing this shoot. So much so that 3 hours passed before I realized the time. Now we intend to do a different character from the past to inspire us today. This was a great exercise and a great time shooting, learning and overall having fun doing what we love. For more of my images on Salvador Dal’ (aka Marco) see here.
Be creative and keep shooting.
