(T-DaG) Fire, Tesla coils and shooting in Paris by night! (Benjamin Von Wong)

af Brian - fotomalia.dk

WOW – Igen i denne uge er det med MEGET stor stolthed at vi kan præsentere en særdeles lækker, lækkerbisken til vores læsere – vi har nemlig fået rigtig fint besøg!

Men herlighederne stopper ikke ved fint besøg, for vores gæst er faktisk frisk på mere sjov, så husk nu og læs hele indlægget!

BENJAMIN VON WONG

Inovativ, kreativ inspirerende og måske en smule grænse overskridende – Benjamin Von Wong er uden tvivl en fotograf i særklasse!

Det sker en sjælden gang i mellem at man støder på en fotograf og tænker – HOLD DA OP!

Da jeg for snart en hel del år siden første gang stødte på Hr. Von Wong, tænkte jeg HOLD DA OP!! – Her har vi en fotograf der virkelig forstår at rykke på grænsen og virkelig forstår at lege! Hans billeder er i en klasse for sig selv, og jeg har sjældent set nogen lave noget der brænder så meget igennem som det han præsterer.

Han har sin helt egen stil og forstår at udnytte og fremskaffe de resourcer han har behov for – med andre ord, han forstår at materialisere de idéer han har. Benjamin gør også et kæmpe arbejde for at inspirere andre og deler ofte hele hans shoots i lærerige og vel producerede videoer på hans blog.

Hvis du ikke allerede kender ham, så er det på tide du besøger hans hjemmeside – www.vonwong.com – og ser mere til hans fantastiske arbejde!

Vi har i denne uge fået særligt lov til at præsentere et af hans egne blog indlæg, og da Hr. Von Wong kommer fra det store udland er hans biddrag på engelsk – men bare roligt, hans billeder virker stadig på dansk!

SPØRGSMÅL

Men Benjamin’s biddrag stopper faktisk ikke her, for han har indvilliget i at besvare vores nysgerrige spørgsmål – derfor smid jeres spørgsmål i en kommentar, så samler vi de 15 bedste og sender dem til ham, og besvarelserne på disse bliver så til et (T-DaG) indlæg på et senere tidspunkt!

Nå ikke mere snak fra min side, hermed giver vi ordet videre til Benjamin Von Wong!

 

“Hello FotoMalia! So happy to see me featured all the way here in Denmark! If you guys have any questions feel free to write a comment & be sure to check out my blog for many more goodies like this!”

 

Fire, Tesla coils and shooting in Paris by night!

Fire, has become somewhat of one of those trademark things that I’ve become quite well known for and every time I think I’ve got all the effects figured out, new challenges pop up.

On my latest tour through Europe, “L’ordre des pyromanciers excentriques” contacted me through Master Pyrotechnician Andrey DAS to help them take some new unique promo images featuring the new toys that they had prepared.

Since I was travelling light, all I had with me were some Nikon speedlights and some Elinchrom Ranger Quadras so the sets had to be kept to a bare minimum.

As with every pyro shoot, resources are in limited quantities so you’re always limited to a certain number of tries before materials run out… this meant that very quickly, I needed to be able to identify what settings to throw the camera on for each specific effect and how I was going to create a final image.

For the first shot with Laurie and the “sparkle stick” for lack of a better word, we had to take the shots in two separate exposures. The effect is dangerously hot so the user has to be covered head to toe like a ninja.

To ensure that colour temperatures remained the same, we slapped CTO gels onto the strobes so that things would make sense when the shot was recomposed together.

vonwong_sparkles1

The final composite (red.)

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Laurie lit with an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra + Rotalux Deep Octa 100cm

 

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Long exposure of flaming embers. Camera settings: ISO 200/ f18 / 0.4 sec

 

FLAME TRAILS

The next effect to capture was the flame trails coming out of Kevin’s magical wand. The effect was extremely organic but unpredictable as it was basically an ignition of a flammable powder. It also happened to be extremely bright which meant that I had to push my Quadra Rangers to max power in order to get exposures right for the flames.

vonwong_firestick

“One Exposure – all in camera” (Red.)

 

It took many tries to get things just right and with DAS playing voice activate light man + gobo, we managed to wing out just enough power to match the intensity of the flames. Camera settings: ISO 50 , f/22 , 1/5 sec

VON_5515 “Behinde the scenes shot” (red.)

DRAMATIC GRUOP

Finally, we went onto the oldest bridge in Paris “Pont neuf” for our final dramatic shot to pose the entire team next to another for the final group shot.

vonwong_pyrocrew

Final image – all in camera (red.)

 

By this time, I had already mastered how the burning embers were going to look so it was just a question of having Assistant Jerem Cote jump around and wave the flaming ball of embers in the right sequence while the wind was blowing in the right direction.

Lighting setup this time around was a simple single light with an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra + Rotalux Deep Octa 100cm boomed overhead with a Mogopod.

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Here’s an unedited “before” picture for those of you that are curious: ISO 100, f9, 5 sec

 

SHOOTING TESLA

Finally, for the grand finale, we took a home made Tesla Coil into Waldo Lee‘s studio to create our token “poster shot”. For those of you who have never had the opportunity to play with a tesla coil, I highly urge you to go to a museum (no, don’t build one) and check one out. These things are SO ridiculously powerful that the effect on you is pretty indescribable.

Figuring out how to shoot electricity was quite a challenging process. For one, every take came with a sort of “BRACE YOURSELVES!” followed by a couple tens of seconds of intense crackling where I had to experiment with a whole variety of settings while coordinating one of the performers.

VON_5741-copyHere are a couple outtakes

 

The final magical numbers for me were ISO 320, f/22, 13.0 sec for the lightning. Combine that with some of the previous day’s magical flame powder and our eccentric pyromancers… we had our poster shot!

VON_5812-Edit-Edit2

The final composite

 

All in all, a great day, amazing team and a crazy unique experience ^_^

VON_5852

 

 

FOTOMALIA SIGER TAK

Det er med stor stolthed vi takker for Benjamin Von Wong’s bidrag, og vi ser allerede frem til jeres nærgående spørgsmål og ikke mindst hans svar – så derfor husk nu lige at smide en kommentar, om ikke andet, så bare lige for at han kan se at vi er taknemmelige!

Igen stor tak til Benjamin!

 

 

Relateret indlæg

7 Kommentarer

Thomas Henning august 15, 2013 - 10:14 pm

Super fedt arbejde!

Besvar
Brian - fotomalia.dk august 17, 2013 - 9:06 am

Ja han kan nogle ting ham Von Wong – meget inspirerende…

Besvar
Søren Skovsgaard august 15, 2013 - 10:17 pm

Cool, or rather Hot 🙂
.
Amazing pictures and some guy who actually seem more crazy than you guys. I am amazed that it wasn’t Kasper who discovered Wong’s blog. Seem almost like a rolemodel for him…

Besvar
Brian - fotomalia.dk august 17, 2013 - 9:08 am

Ha ha ha… Ja Kasper kommer nok lidt til korte her – eller det er vel bare et spørgsmål om at han lige spænde hjelmen, og kommer ind i kampen..
.
Han burde droppe det der job noget så han havde lidt mere tid til at lege!

Besvar
Steen Bugtrup august 16, 2013 - 10:28 pm

WOOOOOOW… Nice work.. amazing ! thx for sharing 🙂

Besvar
Brian - fotomalia.dk august 17, 2013 - 9:08 am

Vi siger også tak til Von Wong – og håber på nogle spændende spørgsmål fra jer!
😉

Besvar
Ole Kramer august 30, 2013 - 9:31 am

Cool

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