Stranded!

Models: Ian, Chelsey, Chloe.

Stylist: Tiffany Parente Connors & Elizabeth Lodowski

MUA & Hair: Tiffany Parente Connors

Props: PJ Hummel and Sabine Foster.

"Stranded", a nod to "Paper Moon" and perhaps to some old Fellini movies took a couple of months of planning (props, vintage clothing, a few items from Anthropologie) but only 45 minutes to shoot. We were on our way to Odessa, WA when I stumbled onto the perfect location. It was getting dark and we "got the image" just before a rain shower poured on the set. A quick affair. Thanks to Laurie Clark and Danny Connors for assisting! Usual lighting scheme: large diffused softbox, next to camera, smaller strobe on Softlighter at camera left.

Space Queens of Skull Mountain

This the first image from the desert shoot. Inspired by B sci-fi movies of the 60ies we laid our scene in a dried lake bed, overshadowed by huge rock formations. Why are the queens battling on a strange planet? Who's winning? The weather set the mood as it was blustery and it drizzled all day. I forgot how much tulle we used but there was a lot. Make up and hair was complex and it took more than an hour. The inside of the truck was covered in mud, the sand (salt? radioactive waste? We did not ask) was covered in bullet cases of different (large) calibers and broken bottles of beer. Ah Eastern Washington. Having said that it was really a lot of fun to shoot "Space" and a great example of team work.

The light set up is a bit different from my usual. The 7' silver softbox (powered by an Einstein unit from Alien Bees) is next to camera, but there are two handheld speedlites behind our hero to the left and to the right, lighting the white cloud and adding some nice highlights. f7.1 1/200sec to darken the cloudy sky. Lens: a Tamron 16-35 f2.8, which turned out to be surprisingly sharp and it is becoming my lens of choice.

Fiona Pepe (of the Castaways and awesome photographer herself) styled the models costumes (some are from the UW theatre archive). Tiffany Parente Connors did hair and MUA and styled the models (C & C and I) on set. Laurie Clark assisted. Danny, sorry I had to erase you, you were awesome.

Done for the day? Not. We jumped on our spaceships and we headed further east....

East bound and down...(the trailer, courtesy of Ian Obermuller and Jerry Reed))

Central Washington from Ian Obermüller on Vimeo.

"Governato drives, Obermuller shoots" is the other title of this fun video taken with a handheld, window open, wind slapped, rain soaked Canon G10. A little more than a week ago a small group of photographers, including the world famous Laurie Clark, Chloe Scheffe and myself headed to Eastern Washington with a posse of artists & models, friends, assistants, stylists and a (diesel) truck full of props, costumes, equipment and food. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. There were dry lake beds, mud, tree stumps, swarms of mosquitoes, gale force winds, a pink flamingo on stilts, large fire extinguishers, tumble weed, old country songs on the radio and several shoots a day over a long week end and 670 miles of dusty roads.

Stay tuned for the images!