To attempt to break out of this I started going out and photographing things that I don’t normally shoot. For example one night I drove around and took pictures of the town I live in after dark. Then on two different mornings fog had settled in and I ran out to grab pictures; once of a statue in a local cemetery and the other morning just some random areas around town. I even drove two hours north of my home and hiked through the rain to take some pictures of some abandoned dilapidated cars. Anything to try and shake off the rut feeling that I have.

Everyone gets in ruts at times but this one has been longer than normal and seems to be no end in sight. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am going to have to really stretch myself creatively if I’m going to break out it. I have some ideas but at this point I don’t even know where to start, I just know that this year cannot be a year where I don’t push myself. This year has to be the year I break all my expectations and accomplish some long term goals.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had a fascination with hotels. When I was a child I loved when my family took trips that involved staying in a hotel. It is something about the unknown stories that exist within their walls. Unlike your bedroom in your home, a hotel has been the home for thousands of people in its lifetime. Unlike home you don’t know the story of the night before. Was the person before you happy or sad, hopeful or depressed? Did they stay one night, two, or three? Where they on their way home or was this a stopover in a much longer journey? Even to this day I enjoy staying in hotels. It may seem childish but I think I don’t have to pick up the towels, make the bed, or take-out the trash. I can kick back, read, watch TV, eat in bed, or just go straight to sleep and not worry about anything. Then of course their is room service and having a staff ready to serve you at your convenience. It is like being a millionaire for 24 hours.

When I started in photography I started using hotel rooms as locations for various shoots. I’ve photographed in very high end rooms that rent for over a $1,000 per night down to roach motels that rent for $30 or less and is so filthy your feet get dirty walking across the carpet barefoot. Each has its advantage in terms of photography, the high end room lends itself well to portraits and fashion, while the low end room provides a film noir feel that lends itself well to dark moody session. Such is the hotel I shot this in. This particular hotel is not necessarily a roach motel. It was however a lower budget hotel with solid white walls. This presented both opportunity and problems.

With all white walls whatever light hits them is going to reflect but the upside is that being white walls I can easily color them in any fashion I want. I decided for this I wanted a set that gave the feel of a cheaper hotel with large red neon lights coming in through the windows. I also wanted my subject to be lost in thought watching the TV. I also wanted a separate light source in the background to act as the light from a tungsten lamp in the room.

I set my camera’s exposure so that no ambient light from the window or room would affect the exposure.  On the flash with the red gel I placed one red and one dark violet in order to give me the color effect I wanted on the wall behind my model. I wanted light from a TV so I aimed a small strobe at the model zoomed out to the max 105mm with a teal gel. Then to give the color of light from a lamp I placed a strobe with a full CTO orange gel at the sink area near the bathroom to light the back wall and give a small amount of rim light on the model.

I instructed my model to imagine herself in deep thought with the weight of the world resting on her shoulders. I didn’t want a sexual or erotic feel but more of a lonely or isolated feel. We shot for about two hours experimenting with various power level on the lights. The trick with lights with gels is the less power you put through them the more saturated the color is. Even still I had to bump up the saturation in post production to get the final effect I wanted.

I saved this story for last because unlike the other stories this week Tara’s story is not one that is open to opinion of its reality. With stories of moving shadows, ghost, and haunted houses people can dispute or disbelieve for Tara it’s not paranormal but a terrifying medical condition. Tara has been diagnosed with Sleep Paralysis, a disorder that prevents the person from moving that occurs as they are falling asleep or waking up. Though not life threatening the disorder can be terrifying as it often includes hallucinations and the inability to wake up out of it. People who suffer from it describe it as waking up dead, the mind is awake but the body is unable to move.

For Tara this means nights where she is in a paralyzed dream state that she is unable to wake up from. When I announced on social media I was looking for stories for Halloween, Tara wrote me and shared with me her story. After reading her story I felt it was probably the most frightening of the stories because it something that can be qualified and proven;

For years, almost every year of my life, I’ve been haunted in my sleep. I have a condition known as Sleep Paralysis, known to many, but so far unexplained by science. Basically, you’re asleep and awake at the same time, body completely paralyzed, mind running rampant between two realities. It starts with the feeling of something sitting on your chest, suffocating you, which often leads to a panic attack, which convinces your brain that you’re dying. If that’s not terrifying enough, these episodes are usually accompanied by vivid and horrifying hallucinations, or waking dreams. You are perfectly aware of the real world. You can feel your bed, you know your location, you can hear the sound of your fan, or refrigerator, or a dog barking in the distance, but dream land has broken into this world. I typically have to lay frozen, struggling to breathe as my nightmares manifest around me. Someone crawls into my bed and pins me down. A shadow stands over me, whispering. The dead congregate around me, screaming my name. A faceless child grabs my ankles and growls. My television gives me sinister warnings. An angry spirit runs through my home tearing through my belongings, wailing, and glowering down at me in my bed. Once, it flicked me in my face repeatedly. Sometimes I feel is though my body is being ripped out of my bed into other worlds, that could only be described as Hell itself. The things I’ve seen in those visions would put Pet Semetary to shame. The one episode I’ll remember the most, is hearing my bedroom door open, footsteps approaching my bedside. The next thing I knew, someone was breathing on my face, telling me that locking my door was useless, because they’d always find a way in. I refused to open my eyes, but I found enough strength to reach my hand up, and find a face. At that point, whoever this was opened it’s mouth and bit down on my fingers, hard. I reached up my other hand and tried to pry it’s mouth open. I succeeded, but I felt it’s mouth stretch out to grotesque proportions, as if it’s jaw was entirely unhinged. It laughed, and I used every ounce of energy to violently shake myself out of this state. I didn’t rest the remainder of the night, afraid it would come back. As stated above, I’ve been living with this for as long as I can remember, and though I’m used to it, it’s never any less terrifying. The film Insidious resonates with me, because those are the kind of things that come into my world regularly, when I’m just trying to sleep. So, almost every night, I get to live inside of a horror film, as the main character.

How I Created This Image

I wanted to show Tara paralyzed in bed with a small streak of light coming through a cracked doorway. To simulate a night time feel I placed two strobes in the room in opposite corners with blue gels. These were reflected off walls and ceilings to cast a blue tint over the entire scene. In the doorway outside the room I placed a third strobe with a full CTO gel. I closed the door to just a crack to shape the light into a thinner stream.

Haunted houses and Halloween go together like peanut butter and jelly. You rarely think of one that you don’t think of the other. Earlier this year I contacted Todd Chandler who owns the Columbia Manor house in Columbia, AL. The house is an operating haunted house attraction that runs from the first of October through Halloween night. It has been listed as one of the best haunted attractions in the nation, has been featured on the Bio’s Channel’s My Ghost Story, and it attracts over 8,000 visitors into a town of less than a 1,000 people each year.

In addition to being a haunted house attraction the house itself is actually haunted. Built in the mid 1920’s the home as been a private residence and a hospital in its history. I met with Todd one summer afternoon to talk him about the house and get some of his experiences. Todd told me the most prominent experience they have had is the smell of maple syrup. While this may sound like an unusual way to be haunted back in 1963 a woman who owned the home was being cared for in the front living room. Each morning they would serve her pancakes with hot maple syrup up to the day she died. Todd and his staff learned of this when they hired a paranormal investigation team to investigate the house and it was later confirmed by her grandchildren. In fact you can see the hospital bed she died in is part of the haunted attraction.

Todd also shared with me that he and his staff have seen orbs move through rooms and a full body apparition of a man in the front of the home they believe to be Dr. John Yarbough, a physician from the days the home was a hospital. As for his personal experiences Todd says he does not scare easy but on one night around midnight he was in the house alone. It was dark inside the house and Todd was making his way out locking it up before going home when he heard footsteps approaching him. He said he stopped and turned towards the sound when he felt a hand brush up his arm from his elbow to his neck. Todd described the sensation of chill bumps on his shoulders and upper arm, but his forearm and hand had gone numb. He freely admitted he left hurriedly and was more than willing to allow whoever to have the house to themselves for the night.

How I Took This Image

This looks like a simple image and technically it is.  A 24″ easy softbox is to camera left while flash with no modifier and CTO get is set a low power to camera right to fill in shadows.  The hidden lighting factor is a flash aiming into the ceiling behind the camera with a teal colored gel. This was light the walls that would appear in the mirror’s reflection. The challenge however was getting the lights to work. Despite the fact that I had placed fresh batteries in the lights and transmitters they kept not working. When I would reset and test everything worked fine, but go to take a picture and there would be no flash. Quirky electronics or supernatural interference, you decide….

Special Note

Todd and his staff put on a great Halloween show. They have been very generous and allowed me to come out and photograph on their property, share their stories, and been all around genuinely nice people. If you are looking for a special treat this Halloween season go visit these guys and be sure to tell them I sent you. 

Have you ever seen shadows moving? I have. It was many years ago when I worked in law enforcement. While on patrol at night I would see the shape of a person standing on the side of the road. As the headlights of the car would hit the figure it would begin to run. When I turned on the spotlight there would be no one there. At first I thought I was seeing things until other officers in the department started reporting seeing the same thing.

A quick search on the web will pull up stories of shadow people moving through the corners of people’s peripheral vision. There are various speculations as to what the shadow forms are from ghost to alternate dimensional creatures. Having experienced seeing these shadows myself when Joshua contacted me with his story I had an understanding of what he might have seen;

I am a huge lover of scary stories so every Halloween I celebrate it with themed photoshoots. I’ve done collaborations with writers telling a creepy romantic story, a H.P. Lovecraft inspired film noir, and a collection of portraits of Walking Dead fans. This year I asked people to share with me their personal scary or ghost stories. Each story is from the person’s own experience along with their portrait.

After posting on social media that I was looking for ghost stories Julia contacted me through Facebook to share her story from her childhood;

When I was a little girl my mother, brother and I went to visit a friend in South Florida. He was a handyman from Maine who had moved down to the area to take care of his ailing mother in a big, dusty old house. After dinner, mom put me and my brother to bed in the large guest bedroom at the top of the stairs. The room had lots of windows with dusty, rough wooden floors. I dazed in and out of sleep and awoke to an old, haggard looking woman standing at the foot of my bed pouring sand on my sheets. I asked her what she was doing, “I’m cursing you to forever have sand in your bed!” She cackled, her wizened lips dry against rotten teeth. “I’m not afraid of you” I retorted, pulling myself up from the bed. I stood in front of her unafraid with my hands on my hips. She looked at me very confused. I stood there a while longer and I gradually became frightened. She looked like an old witch from a scary story. All gusto left me and I screamed for my mom and in a blur I was at the foot of her bed. She hushed me and I was put back to sleep after being reassured about witches and monsters and the fact neither existed. I remember thinking, before I settled into an uneasy sleep, that there was a lot of sand on my sheets.

How I Shot This Image

This was shot about midday under a few large trees. The sunlight created the pattern on the wall of the old condemned building. To light Julia I used a strobe with a twenty degree grid which I focused on her eyes. Behind this I placed a second strobe firing through a shoot through umbrella at about two stops below my main light. I wanted to concentrate the light hitting her eyes while giving her face an overall fill.

My first few frames were at eye level with Julia using a 35mm lens but it did not give me the feeling I was looking for. I switched the lens to a 18mm and got below her looking up at the building. This gave me more of the light streaks on the wall and allowed me to include the window. It still wasn’t giving me the feel I wanted until Julia suggested she blow out some cigarette smoke has I exposed for the frame. While I don’t support or advocate smoking a healthy lifestyle it did give me the whisk smoke to help set the eerie tone. In post all I had to do was adjust the contrast and desaturate the colors slightly.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for another Halloween story, this time something is lurking in the woods….

I brought in a large black backdrop, a beauty dish and a medium size reflector. For shots of one or two people I placed them close to the reflector, set the strobe on it lowest power and shot with as a shallow depth of field as possible. I just wanted their eyes and facial features to be sharp and let the other features blur slightly. The light was set on a boom directly overhead with the reflector set to reflect back into the shadows on the underside of the face. I figured the beauty or clam shell lighting would soften shadows on the face giving a complimentary lighting to the subjects regardless of age or gender. This worked fine for one to two subjects, for larger groups I moved the reflector out and pulled the light back  raising its power to allow me to get a deeper depth of field.

When it was over I was exhausted. Three days of working alone moving and carrying gear, standing for hours at a time on concrete had definitely taken its toll physically. Emotionally however it felt great. I learned that the veterans of the Vietnam War still carry some hurt and in some cases anger over how they were treated when they came home. They had served their country in one of the most controversial wars in our history and as a result many of them had never been welcomed home. “All gave some, some gave all” was a reminder of how their lives had been forever altered by the war. To this men and their families who served our nation I personally want to say thank you and though it may be late, welcome home.

On the second day with the Birddog unit I covered a memorial ceremony at Fort Rucker dedicating a Vietnam Memorial. It was a an extremely hot day, which is just like the south to give you blazing hot in the middle of fall. Despite that well over 300 people attended the memorial service. At the ceremony they requested that I take a picture of all the attendees, but the officiator dismissed the crowd and getting them back into place. There was still around 200 people paying enough attention to get the largest group shot I have ever taken. There was no shade, no cloud cover, just harsh direct sunlight. I shot in aperture priority mode allowing the camera to do most of the work for me.

Following the memorial ceremony a barbecue luncheon was held at a hangar where they had two of the birddog planes and a few helicopters. On the one end were the massive hangar doors that filtered in a beautiful soft light, but only about a quarter of the way in. Past that the light dropped off quickly. The ceilings on the hanger were way to high to bounce light so I set up a small flash with softbox on a small lightstand that I could carry in one hand and operate the camera in the other. This let me move about the entire hanger capturing images of the event. Then near the doors I simply went with all natural light.

I also began photographing the different unit groups. These groups ranged from one or two men to groups of fifty. The only place large enough to photograph the groups without people behind them was along one of the exterior doors. With the sun slightly behind the hangar it provided me with an even light that that gave me consistent exposure from the front to the back of each group. The wall was plain metal so I composited in an American flag to the wall behind the groups.

Throughout the day they had been giving rides on the helicopter and one of the planes. As the end of the day approached most of the people had gone with only one or two people left and I got to grab a picture of one of the birddog planes before it took off.

For over Fifty five years the venerable Birddog has served diligently in the U.S. and International military forces, the Civil Air Patrol, law enforcement, the U.S. Forest Service, missionary work, and in glider/banner towing operations all over the world. The Birddog has had an impressive record of service and is still sought after for its capabilities and sheer fun of flying a true Warbird.

What is a Birddog? This tough and reliable critter is a very special aircraft. In response to request from the U.S. Army for an improved Liaison aircraft, the Cessna Aircraft Company developed plans, tooled up, and began manufacturing. The first model 305 was delivered to the Army in December of 1950. The Army liked it, designated it the L-19 (Liaison), and named it the “Birddog”. Many L-19’s were immediately deployed to the war in Korea. Others were sent to Army and National Guard units in other areas. Years later, Birddogs were sent to Vietnam and used in various combat roles by the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps. By then the designation had been changed to O-1 (Observation). The enemy feared the presence of the Birddog because it forewarned of bad things to come.

Around 3400 of these Warbirds were built by Cessna over a ten-year period. About 22 were built to Military specifications by Fuji Heavy Industries in Japan. Through the Military Assistance program other nations obtained Birddogs and actually “copied” and “cannibalized” the aircraft in order to increase their numbers. The Ector Aircraft Co. of Midland, Texas built civilian versions of the Birddog in more up-to-date configurations.

The basic Birddog is a 2100 pound (loaded), high wing tandem seat aircraft with an all metal skin and a six cylinder Continental engine providing the muscle to swing the big 90 inch prop. Birddogs with a fixed pitch prop had the 213 HP O-470-11 engine. Those with the constant speed prop were powered by the 213 HP O-470-15. With a 36 foot wing span, conventional gear (tail wheel), 60 degrees of flaps and power to spare, this work horse could haul two men, gear, a full load of fuel (41 gallons) and up to eight 2.75 inch rockets in and out of short runways even at higher elevations. With it’s excellent fuel economy, the Birddog can remain on station (at low power settings) for up to five hours. On floats the Birddog has successfully been used by bush operators and fish spotters. With a hook, the Birddog is perhaps one of the best banner/glider tow aircraft around. (Source: International Birddog Association)

As I learned more about them and what they did during the war I realized they were very passionate about their service and what they accomplished in the war. This was not men who were ashamed of the war but are proud soldiers that gladly gave of themselves to serve their country.

At every meal a table was set up for those that did not make it home.

There was excitement in their faces and voices as they shared stories and current life events.

The most common thing I seen that night were the men, their friends, and family gathered around albums and stacks of pictures from Vietnam.

]]> https://tskipperphotos.wordpress.com/2015/10/14/50-year-reunion-of-vietnam-veterans-day-i-part-ii/feed/ 0 timskipperphotography VietnamVets50Yr_011w VietnamVets50Yr_009w VietnamVets50Yr_008w https://tskipperphotos.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/50-year-reunion-of-vietnam-veterans-day-i-part-i/ https://tskipperphotos.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/50-year-reunion-of-vietnam-veterans-day-i-part-i/#respond Fri, 09 Oct 2015 12:55:27 +0000 http://timskipperphotography.net/?p=2075 Continue reading →]]> There are some jobs you get that you take to pay bills. There are some jobs you take because they will be fun. But on the rare occasion you take a job that is an honor.

That is what this weekend is for me, an honor. Starting last night and going through this coming Saturday I am creating a photograph document of the 50 year reunion of the Birddog Group of Vietnam Veterans. Many of these men have not seen each other since the war ended in 1975. I can’t even put into words how much of an honor it is and how great of a responsibility it is to cover this event. The first night was a dinner reception in the local country club. This room was over stuffed with veterans and their families. From the point of photography this was a giant cave. I lit the room with two strobes at either end reflecting of the ceiling. It was not ideal but it got the job done. Last night was not about getting creative. These men and women just wanted pictures with their friends and family on this special occasion. I took lots of pictures of people standing next to each other in a single line, no great compositions, no great lighting setups, amazing emotion.

I’ve selected five from the first night as my favorites and will be selecting more later. Over the next several days I will be posting the images and my experiences here. I hope you will be able to follow along. You can also keep track on Periscope. I will be broadcast live as much as possible. You can follow in on Periscope by looking up @timskipperphoto.

Till later….

I could not tell if he was happy or about to cry as he looked at the photographs from the Vietnam War.

There was great pride in who they were and what they had done.

Friends gathered together for drinks, stories, laughter, and a few tears.