Creating the Photograph

Creating the Photograph: Chris Gampat’s “The Underground Club”

Chris Gampat
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05/08/2017
3 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Ready for the Club Creating the Photograph final (1 of 1)ISO 4001-60 sec at f - 2.8

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.

I’ve done a number of posts for our Creating the Photograph series partially because they help me to show off a different way or thinking about a problem that needs to be solved on a set. So recently when working with the Fujifilm GFX 50s on a shoot, I tried to find a way to deliver that “club” type of look that’s becoming so popular again in photography. I’ve written about it before, but not a whole lot and not in terms of practical application.

So here’s my story.

The Concept

Every now and again, I get invited to try out new products. So when Lomography and Pursuit of Portraits teamed up to do something, I decided to shoot both Instax film and Digital. One of the models was Ramon Nunez, and not only did I love his outfit but he was also just a genuinely nice guy to work with. Ramon had this outfit that harkened back to the 70’s in so many ways. There was a lot of natural light around to work with in the Gowanus studio we were at. But there just wasn’t that special something to match with his outfit.

Gowanus, for the uninitiated, is one of the many gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It has its own art scene and for a while was one of the major DIY art neighborhoods due to it being so close to one of NY’s most polluted waterways. But now, it’s cool–and there are high rises going up like nobody’s business.

Gentrification doesn’t exactly make for a great background to what Ramon’s outfit elicited. And so with that said, I needed to make my own light.

The Gear

The Shoot

So while looking around the lofthouse, I tried to find something that I could use to create a really cool, fun look with Ramon’s outfit. But there wasn’t really a whole lot that could do that. My mind has been trained as of recent to work in a film shooter’s mentality–purposefully as legal blindness makes me want to get something as perfect in camera as possible and not spending more time at a computer than I absolutely need to.

When I was walking around though, I realized that I had been thinking and shooting in Daylight balanced film. So when it came to working in Tungsten, which is what I should’ve been doing to start, things would be much different.

Thanks to Lighting Diagram creator.

I asked Ramon to come out into the hallway with me and we didn’t have a light stand. But Frank over at Lomography graciously volunteered to be my stand. I gelled my flash with the reddest gel I had, cranked the power up because Gels tend to really nerf flash output, and went to work. The lead photo for this section was shot in Daylight white balance. The photos below are shot in Tungsten white balance. That’s where things really started to take off.

Here’s the same lighting situation with Tungsten white balance. A big difference, right? We got a slightly lightened output because the flash was being bounced off of a white wall. The daylight balanced lights behind Ramon created the blue light that you see in the background while my flash overpowered the ambient lighting.

Post-Production

As I’ve stated before, I really tried to get everything perfect in-camera the best I could. So essentially I set the Fujifilm Camera profile up in Lightroom (uggghhhhh, I typically work in Capture One Pro instead) and then did some fairly minor tweaks. Many of those tweaks came with color channel editing and only a few basic adjustments. As you’ll see in the before and after though, this image was pretty much ready and baked from the start.

Before/After

Before
After

PS: we’ve got an incredible package for you where you can experiment with and edit some of our photos that we’ve shot in similar situations. Check it out!

63mm f2.8 adorama chris gampat editing expoimaging flash flashpoint fujifilm Fujifilm GFX 50S gel lightroom lomography pursuit of portraits ramon nunez
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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.