Chris Crumley Blog

We always enjoy doing an image like this; it's in the category of "making a picture" rather than taking one. A lot of pieces must come together.

It starts with finding the right angle and elevation to shoot from. Then, the property must be clean, landscaping done, arranging for lights to be on, ensuring sprinklers don't come on, calling in good weather, doing the multiple lighting via voice radio with crew, having reliable radio-controlled sync between camera and strobe lights and doing some complex post-production work.

Of course, it's also helpful to have an attractive property as a subject.

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The decision tree for an elevated picture angle might start with a helicopter, but a multi-frame dusk/dark composite image prevented that (budget, too). A bucket lift would be too wiggly. Scaffolding would have been fine, but would've needed a lot of delivery and erection effort. That pretty much left an A-Frame ladder. We wanted 16' but there were none in the local rental system, so we settled for my 12' fiberglas and a tripod extension secured hard to the ladder.

Assistant Dale Maurice works on the radios for remote strobe communications.

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If you're gonna "be somebody," better get started now.

With that in mind, I was in Echoes Of Time, a Virginia Beach location for renting/buying vintage clothing, costumes and accessories. The inventory is huge for the Tidewater-size market area.

My costume didn't come together on the first trip (a size issue) but I spotted this headform with red hair, the hat and spyderweb veil. If I was a woman, I would have jumped on this in a heartbeat and finished it with one of a zillion choices of dresses, leather or who-knows-what.

I'm tempted. It's tempting. Naaaawwwwww.... I just couldn't. Well, maybe. Can I?

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We're doing lots of different things lately: interior designer work images, location peanut packaging, underwater dance, underwater business themes, cupcakes, restaurants, frozen cakes, airport FBOs and Meals on Wheels to name a few. Then, in addition to years of still stock and commercial/advertising still photography, we're now doing video projects where it makes sense.

This kind of image, with Ariel Skelley, Michael Broth, Rozlyn Papa, Randy McNeill and Virginia Anderson in Richmond is being captured for both still and motion stock. As the images come out of post-production, they're going to the Getty Images still and motion stock files.

We shifted the color pallet on this frame for the Blog, but the normal four-color version was the primary entry to the stock collection.

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