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Photography Culture

“Plumes” Took A Lot of Experimentation And Careful Setup to Get “Almost Perfect”

Chris Gampat
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09/25/2017
2 Mins read
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All images by Andrei Duman. Used with permission.

“I think it is very important for a photographer to continue to be interested and curious about photography.” explains Andrei Duman about his project, Plumes. “For me, that means that although I may be known more as a travel/landscape/aerial photographer, I am still wanting to push myself and try something new. Stepping outside what you consider to be your comfort zone forces you to be uncomfortable which is when you have the greatest opportunity to learn.” Plumes is a bit of an experimentation that Andrei wanted to do in the studio. And believe it or not, the project ended up helping Andrei with his travel photography.

“Throughout my travels, I always try to think of what I could do differently. Being fascinated with color and how it can intermix in different environments led me to try dropping ink in water to see what would happen.”

Andrei created Plumes with a white backgrounds and Profoto packs using three beauty dishes. After he fired up his Phase One XF iQ3 he got to work. He dropped some paint into a bottle and photographed its descent with the full 101MP sensor. And because this is all 16 bit color, we can see a whole lot of color gradation that’s very subtle but surely there. While the images are pretty beautiful, Andrei still thinks that this project isn’t perfect or finished yet. In fact, he plans to continue to do it on a regular basis. “It took me over 15 hours in the studio to get it to a level that I was happy with.” Andrei explains to the Phoblographer in an email. “Finding a paint manufacturer that provided the look I envisioned took some time and then finding the correct water mix was crucial. Should a take not have worked successfully, having to reset the entire setup would take close to 10 mins.” Here’s more from Andrei:

“The paint needs to be mixed again and the tank needs to be emptied, cleaned and refilled. Any little mistake would ruin it all and you have to start all over again. Needless to say, I was determined to get the images I always envisioned and so shot a great deal. Choosing the right files to even consider working on was very time consuming as nearly every image had something unique. Overall I chose these images because of the quality of the paint folds and the way that the colors wrapped around the others. I am very happy with the way these turned out and am glad to be doing something that is so far from my “usual” and expected body of work.”

 

Andrei Duman background experiment images lighting paint phase one Plumes profoto white
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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.
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