This blog article will be sort of continuation of the first one talking about doing some creative photography with Mr. Ducktail (The Demon Barber of Carnaby St, London). As promised in this second part of my blog, I will be covering all the technical details about the way I lighted the whole scene and Mr. Ducktail.

Following from my previous post, I have already associated Mr. Ducktail with the idea of “The return of Sweeney Todd” in different time period. So to connect better with the initial idea, I wanted to build the sort of dark/night overall feel. And, by the way, this is not the natural atmosphere in Mr. Ducktail barber shop. In order to achieve my goal I needed to use some creative approach to my lighting.

Approach Followed

I was there at 10:00 am, and started setting up at around 10:30. Now, when saying setting up, I don’t mean only the equipment but also the composition, angle, him, her etc. I had the idea of what I wanted to do but, previously, I had the chance of visiting Mr. Ducktail’s shop only once and he was busy working so I didn’t have good opportunity for looking around and thinking about the setup.

Now, as professional photographers, what we normally do is examining and evaluating on location existing and natural lighting if it’s going to connect/fit with the idea/brief of the photoshoot. In my case the ambient was awful, taking me millions of miles away from my idea. On the image bellow you can see how Mr. Ducktail + me and his surrounding looked with all light from the window and some bulbs on the ceiling. Just keep in mind this is an image taken after we finished.