Creating the Photograph

Creating the Photograph: Ronen Goldman’s “Master Magician”

Chris Gampat
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03/14/2016
2 Mins read

FINAL IMAGE

Creating the Photograph is an original series where photographers teach you about how they concepted an image, shot it, and edited it. The series has a heavy emphasis on teaching readers how to light. Want to be featured? Email chrisgampat[at]thephoblographer[dot]com.

Ronen Goldman is a photographer that specializes in the surreal. We’ve interviewed Ronen before here on the site, and many of you genuinely loved his images and ideas. Based in Tel Aviv, the photographer works to create images with a dream-like vibe to them. It has resulted in a series that he’s been creating called “The Surrealistic Pillow Project.”

In fact, he’s been working on it for eight years. And here’s how he created one of his favorite images.

 

The Concept

As part of my personal series “The Surrealistic Pillow Project” I wanted to create an image of a mysterious magician standing in the woods, creating something fantastic which seems like only he is witnessing.

I also wanted it to look as realistic as possible.

The Gear

The Shoot

Back plate

The image was shot at f7.1 with a shutter speed of 1\125 and a sensitivity of ISO 640.

Magician lit

We set out to do the shoot, the plan was to first shoot the magician doing his throwing motion using two umbrellas- one to light the top of this hat and one from below to light his body, hand and the visible part of his face.

 

After doing that, I got a “plate” of the scene- a Photo of the woods with a good exposure with nothing in it except for the trees. We then proceeded to hold each card in its place. The magician himself helped me out(a friend of mine named Dvir) while my assistant(Itai) directed us how to move in order to create a perfect spiral.

Holding cards1

The whole cards process took about an two hours to do perfectly.

Holding cards3_Ronen In Frame

When we were done I got back home and saw the results- it seems the a dial got turned while we were doing the cards, and they were all underexposed.

It was quite disheartening. I knew this was an image worth fighting for, so I assembled the team again, and we did the whole thing from the start the following day.

Jackpot.

Ronen Goldman the Magician the surrealistic pillow project
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.