Steampunk is the new black

I've long been fascinated by science fiction and cyberpunk literature. When the steampunk movement started becoming more prevalent, I started paying attention to what people were doing with it. It's amazing what lengths people will go to re-create something in brass and steel, just to get the right look, the right feel for an object whether it's clothing or geekiness.

Red expressed interest in having her new steampunk outfit recorded on film. We were going to do it the last time she was in town, but by the time we got around to it, the day was faltering and it was quite a drive to the scene I had wanted to put her into. I knew of a great set of train tracks that always had some railcars parked on it. They would have been perfect had the drive not been so long. We opted to do the shoot another day.

When I got into the studio, I found the building rife with corrugated steel and darkness: perfect for something steampunk-ish. I let her know and we arranged to do a shoot last Saturday (the 25th), making sure to have her bring the outfit in this time. Along with it, she brought an excellent point of detail: a 9mm steel, brass, and pearl Taurus PT 92. If that handgun didn't scream steampunk, I'm not sure what would.

We ended up with quite a good photos out of it, including my favorite (the first one) and one of her favorites (the last one). I definitely need to do more steampunk photos. It's an aged beauty that just sort of ... speaks to me. I had an amazing amount of fun doing this one.

This has been one of the more "staged" shoots really. I spent a little bit of time trying to figure out what I wanted form this one and trying to place her into the environment so she blended a bit. Back to that whole idea of taking photographs versus making photographs. I've watched some of the things that Chase Jarvis does in his ninja shoot, for example, and I'm picking up on the idea that I like coming up with concepts (even if I think I still suck horribly at it ... I'm getting better!) instead of just taking a model and posing her half a dozen ways.


The light is getting much easier to manipulate each time I do this. I'm starting to experiment a bit more with adding one, two, or even three more lights just to see what happens. For this shoot, I played around with the gridspot I built for my speedlights. I'm not sure about the effect yet. I mostly used it to get the gun metal to pop a bit more without overly spilling light onto Red. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

But when it did, I think it worked reasonably well. And that's all I can ask for. Lots of failures in this shoot. And that's really what I wanted.