The Masters' Challenge - Photovacation 2014

The Masters Challenge, Photovacation 2014 Authors: Nikolay Abadjiev, Plamena Koeva

In August 2014, the organizers of Photovacation invited us to participate in the "Masters Challenge" initiative. The main idea of this challenge was to show the audience the process of realizing a photography project from the perspective of two professional photography teams – Resize Studio and Temelko Temelkov. Our task included generating the idea and its implementation within a budget of 500 BGN, provided by our sponsors Dynaphos and Canon Bulgaria.
Without being adversarial, the challenge aimed to illustrate each team's individual approach. 

So, here's what we did with our task.
The budget of 500 BGN offered us the opportunity to use two different approaches. The first was to use a standard approach and spend the entire budget on a stylist and makeup artist. The second was to forgo external services and invest all our resources in buying props and accessories for the shoot.
The first approach would be much closer to how we usually work with our clients, but considering the idea we had and our desire to make things more interesting for the audience, we decided to choose the second one.

1. The Idea
When we were selecting the idea to realize, our thoughts understandably revolved around marine themes. Our main concern was that even though the topic was extremely popular, the visual clichés it contained were too many: waves, horizons, boats, fishermen, sails, ships . . . and every possible combination between them was repeatedly exploited.
We found the solution in escaping reality. We came up with the idea of a fantasy world, where the entire surface of the planet has been covered with water and its citizens have found refuge from the huge tidal waves on small, flying islands. Along with this came the idea for our main character – a fisherman who uses the numerous ladders hanging from the islands to descend to the ocean. Even at this stage, we considered that only one photo wouldn't be enough to tell our story as we would like . . . but more on that later. 

After the concept was discussed, we made some rough sketches of the first shot, including the composition and the main character – as well as the most common ideas for the styling. 

As the next step in the process, we started collecting a "mood board" – a collection of images that provides guidelines for selecting adequate accessories, for the styling, and for the model's look – everything that would help concretize the final appearance of the project. 

Being fans of the post-apocalyptic genre in cinema, our ideas for the styling of the leading character led us to the depths of prodavalnik.com, and soon numerous parcels began to arrive. 

2. The Preparation
It was clear that a large part of the preparation of the costume and accessories for the shoot should be accomplished in Sofia, before we left for Photovacation. There, we would have neither the time nor the conditions to prepare ourselves adequately. Once the entire budget was spent, our house woke up in a bamboo forest, tens of meters of ropes, fabrics, leather . . . and a collection of antique articles with strange purposes – corsets, sheep-shearing scissors, high-activity belts, and many others. 

After we turned our home into a store – came the more difficult part, transforming all these "raw" materials into meaningful decorations and accessories. An essential element in our shot would be the ladder – good-looking, but also strong enough not to risk injuring the model. We looked for references again.

Then we got to the realization. The bamboo and ropes gradually turned into a ladder, the sheep-shearing scissors – into an arrowhead, the leather and fabrics – into a costume. 

3. The Shooting
Given that our idea involved very complicated post-processing of different images, right after we arrived in Primorsko, we started "collecting" separate components, paying most attention to those needed for creating the "flying" islands. Around 20 shots, captured in Sozopol and its areas, were needed for building the two islands. 

Our leading character was captured at sunset, near Primorsko Beach. We took advantage of the existing metal construction on the beach and the precious help of the viewers, to keep her in the right position. 

Author: Vili Todorova

To our great disappointment, the sky at the moment of shooting wasn't expressive enough. For our luck, however, the next evening we managed to photograph a magnificent sky at the same location and at the same time, which gave us the opportunity to plausibly replace the sky in the original image. 

Along with the shooting of the first image, the idea of the second photo had framed in our heads, the one in which we wanted to develop the story. We decided to use a reference to "the stick fishermen" of Sri Lanka, catching fish on poles stuck in the flood zone. 

As shooting the model in the water wasn't a realistic task, considering the risks, we decided to capture the image on the beach.

    model: Ani Rangelova

We captured the other components of the image separately – a background, a lantern, poles . . . We used portable flashlights ThinkLite TT520 to light the components while shooting, as everything was happening after sundown. 
     

4. The Post-Process
Although the post-process is the most complicated and time-consuming part of the process, it's difficult to describe it with words. We will only say that long before we finished, we lost count of the layers in Photoshop. 

Several dozens of hours of retouching later, the two images were ready:

In many ways, "The Masters Challenge" turned out to be much more challenging than we'd expected at the beginning, but we hope that the outcome will please the viewer as much as it pleased us.