How I Made This Photo of a Girl ‘Falling’ Asleep
I’ve always found that moment right before falling asleep fascinating. When you let go of your thoughts and fall into the land of dreams. For a long time I wanted to create an image about this, and last year I got the opportunity that was the perfect start.
The Girl
The idea for this project was to have a person in a room floating weightlessly, capturing that moment of falling to sleep.
I figured that the best way to make the fabric of the clothes and the hair of the model to appear weightless would be to shoot it underwater.
Last year I got invited to United Arab Emirates to the XPOSURE festival (November 2017) to exhibit and speak about my work. Apart from that, they had also built a huge water tank for the festival, where underwater shootings and workshops would take place. They asked me if I wanted to shoot something as well and I knew that this would be the perfect opportunity to start working on this project.
Having no previous experience of underwater photo shoots, I decided that the best way to be in control of the shoot would be to shoot from outside the tank. By pressing the lens orthogonality towards the glass underneath a black cloth, I would minimize distortions and unwanted reflections to get as clear a view of the model as possible.
In terms of lighting, I had a large softbox as the main light source from above and a smaller warmer light from the left shot through the glass. The water was clear and by compensating the white balance I could make it look as if the model appeared to hover weightlessly in the tank. The very talented underwater model Krysia Makiela did a fantastic job sleep-floating for me during this session.
The Room
After shooting the model I had a good starting point for the rest of the image. I knew that I wanted a lot of things happening in the room so I started looking for different props I could use. I photographed a room with a cold flash outside the window and a smaller warm flash disguised as a bedside lamp to the left.
I then started shooting the different objects in various positions, some of them supported by fishing line and some by simply holding them up.
I combined all the pieces of the puzzle in Photoshop together with the model. Being consistent with light and perspective made this process quite straightforward but I deliberately let it take time to make sure I would be happy with the end result.
See the process of how it was created in the video below:
I would like to thank Simon Newton and the Xposure festival for giving me the opportunity to shoot in the tank and I would like to thank the underwater model Krysia Makiela for helping me bring this idea to life.
