Bad Religion (photo series)

Let’s talk about my new series of photos, how it was taken and why 🙂

Let me start by saying that the main idea was to try to make a design that could be used for printing, for example, on a t-shirt. I had a metal cross with a skeleton from China, fake blood, so…

It remained to figure out how to capture it on camera. I had:
– a 70-watt constant light;
– a coloured backlight based on several LED bulbs (3 watts each, if I’m not mistaken);
– a “backup” power supply for them;
– a tripod;
– a cross;
– a camera;
– a stupid head;
– glass from the tractor of the previous owners of the house (I’m serious).

– that is, the standard set of any photographer.

It’s only in the photo that I’m smiling, in reality I’m gloomy, because how can you be stupid and smile? 🙂

The blood was partially smeared on the glass itself (that’s what it was needed for, plus to not mess up the light).

Actually, the first attempt I made was purely with coloured light, but later the light changed a little. The blue+red option didn’t really work here, as it turned out.

This is not the final version that I imagined, but the print was supposed to look like something like the one above. Now, perhaps, it’s time to explain. I wanted to use an atypical background, namely in the form of a lighting lamp. Despite the declared power of 70 W, I used it at…1%. That’s right, I chose 1% of the power. It was unlikely that it was 0.7 W, closer to 5-7 W, but it doesn’t matter to us in principle, since this is just a background. No more. We need to illuminate the hand itself. Now I thought that it would be possible to use a mirror that would be located on top of the camera, but we’ll leave that for future experiments. For now, it was somehow like this.

This cross, like other similar decorations, can be purchased for about $1.5-2 on Aliexpress. Despite the oak construction, the metal casting is of quite high quality and is more than enough for taking such photos, as well as as a separate accessory.

In the pictures, I planned to use only the central part. This would allow me to have a completely closed background of a white uniform colour. And as you can see from the picture above – I succeeded. On the blog, I can’t distinguish where the photo ends and the editor’s background begins.

As I see it now – you can simply crop the dark in the photo, and we will get a picture that is completely filled with light color. This is the result that will be more than enough to be used in the future for printing. I note that what you see as the result is not post-processing, but internal camera processing in the Panasonic camera. I love their digital filters.

I don’t really like how the “blood” looks here, but I just smeared it on my hand. The consistency of the fake blood is too thick, like some kind of jelly. Not natural, in my opinion. But it’s enough for my experiments. In the future, I’ll try to apply the blood with a painting brush.

This picture could also be really cool, but here, the blood on the glass has already failed. It doesn’t look very good, does it?..

In normal light, the “blood” looked something like this. I don’t know. I like it better in the dark, what about you?

This colour transition completely drove me crazy. Well, isn’t the colour transition on the hand wonderfully executed? It’s as if darkness itself has engulfed my hand at that moment))

This picture is a reference to a question my wife sometimes has. What is it? Why do I shave my arms for pictures?

The picture above shows the part I cropped from the previous picture. I don’t know about you, but I like the back version without hair better. So if you want to get an aesthetic picture – be prepared to make donations. Although…see the previous blog post – I’m always ready for them 🙂

I am fascinated by the clarity of the lines and the result. I never think about the fact that having a full-frame Panasonic S5, I often shoot with the Panasonic G90. It gives better sharpness, although I don’t think that this is an important factor. I’m just used to the 90. The S5 is for other photos.

I think that among other things I will also take care of these pictures and finish them a little, so everything above is raw versions of what was received on the camera. By the way, this time I used exclusively a mechanical shutter (yes, I went all out). This was necessary to avoid flickering from LED lamps, which happens on an electronic shutter. It is important not to forget about this, because I already ruined a couple of series.

“- ..and you hug your mother with this hand?..”. An example of why I wouldn’t want to work in Europe at a regular job. Because…people wouldn’t understand why I have “bloody hands”. It’s all creativity, friends, it’s all me… 🙂