Creating the Photograph

Creating the Photograph: Tomasz Kedzierski’s “Tribute to Krzysztof Kieślowski”

Chris Gampat
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04/28/2017
3 Mins read
7 CTP Blue Cuncvir

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.

Photographer Tomasz Kędzierski has been a pretty fantastic and creative analog film photographer for a while. We’ve featured his work a number of times on this website. Besides the Square Lips project, his homemade pinholes and his solarigraphy, he’s done some higher end work too. Most recently, he was working on a shoot where he was shooting with Provia 100, and to ensure that he got the shot right, he used a Leica Sofort first before switching back to his Hasselblad 501C.

Here’s his story.

The Concept

The Inspiration: Blue – Film by Krzysztof Kieślowski starring Juliette Binoche

My project One Camera, One Lens and One Model with @thesquarelips took an interesting turn: we are preparing an exhibition with our photographs and we wanted to underline it with a good story. We are making a Tribute to Krzysztof Kieślowski – a great polish film director who has been a great inspiration for me from the get go. Anyone who is into photography should see his films such as “The double life of Veronique” or his Three Colour Trilogy: Blue, White and Red. I’m serious!

 

The Gear

  • 1x Leica Sofort
  • 2 x Profoto B1
  • 1 x umbrella deep white M
  • 1x OCF grid 30 degrees
  • 2 x blue rubbish bag as a colour gel for strobes
  • 1 x grey paper background
  • Final image with a Hasselblad 501C on Fuji Provia 100F slide film and Profoto Air Remote.

The Shoot

As we were closing our scenes on this project we were short of one final photograph, a paraphrase of Kieślowski’s film Blue, starring Juliette Binoche. I was left with one single frame on my Hasselblad and I wanted to make no mistakes. I needed to figure out somehow the proper exposure for this one. As you know I don’t own a digital camera, so I had to do with and instant option: Leica Sofort! Here is how I did it:

One strobe with a blue rubbish bag placed over it with an umbrella deep white M placed directly above the model; one strobe with a blue bag under the 30 OCF grid for B1 for background.

I have placed a post-it note with aluminium foil over the flash of Leica Sofort, as a flag – I wanted to avoid direct flash hitting the model, and I wanted to trigger the strobes this way. It is very unprofessional to use rubbish bags instead of real colour gels, but I had to improvise.

Shot with the Leica Sofort

I know the ISO of Leica Sofort film is 800 and the aperture is 12,7, so I have set the B1 strobes to 6.6 because I felt it would do good. Besides it is a nice number. Fuji Provia 100F is ISO 100 and I set the aperture of F/4.0 on Hasselblad with exposure time of 1/125s. I don’t know the exposure time of Leica – it was just a luck that it worked so well!

I set Profoto B1’s to SLAVE mode just to pick up the flash from a Leica, I did my test shot, waited for four minutes and there it was!

It was supposed to be just a test shot with a Leica, but it turned up so good that I am going to make it the poster of my exhibition – Hommage à Kieślowski, which is going to be shown this autumn at Kieślowski festival in Poland.

And this actually sparks a new idea: why not make more photographs with Leica Sofort! Sometimes limitations are your best friends that push you to create something great and meaningful!

Final Images

Shot with the Leica Sofort
Shot with Provia 100 and the Hasselblad
film fujifilm provia hasselblad hasselblad 501c images Krzysztof Kieślowski leica Leica SOFORT lighting profoto studio Tomasz Kędzierski
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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.