I’m jumping on beds again! This time at the Valley View Motel in Mill Creek, West Virginia. I was up there for an Education Week assignment last week.

Wait? What? You don’t remember the first time? 

And believe it or not, there’s some relatively advanced technical know how used to make these photos. No no no. I’m not talking about my swan like form. I mean I used my camera and strobe’s ‘s high-speed sync function. …some of you might know it as “FP,” or “focal plane” mode. If I relied on my camera’s normal 1/250th sync speed, I’d be blurring rather than levitating. So, to fix I used my D700′s & SB-900′s  high speed capabilities and bounced the flash off the mirror.

What in the world is FP mode? Check out this really good & easy to understand tutorial put together by the good folks over at Pocket Wizard (which, for some reason, I did not use for these photos).

Here’s my exposure info:

Lens: 28mm at f/3.2

Shutter: 1/4000th

Strobe: Nikon Sb-900, on camera, head tilted backwards, zoomed out to somewhere between 50mm & 200mm (I forgot), and max 1/1 power.

Nick DiFabbio (formerly Borkowicz) aka Ghostfreehood brought over some props to Elizabeth Cline’s photoshoot a few weeks ago. …you know, the usual stuff, swords and masks. He got super giddy when I told him I wanted to make a scary portrait of him in the same fashion of this self portrait.  I’m super- stoked it turned out as scary as it did.

My initial idea was to light up his glasses, in a sinister film noir comic book kinda way, but they have the anti-glare coating on them. I still wanna make that image, though.

We definitely didn’t stop with the scary pic, though. Below you’ll see how we utilized a sword and the mask. I’m really stoked about these photos! Anyone else want a scary portrait? Gimme a call. seriously. 

For more of Nick, check out my photoshelter gallery.

There are some beautiful, wacky, and …uh, heroic? photos of Elizabeth Cline’s shoot here.

And I’d be a jerk if I didn’t point you in the direction of Elizabeth in a mask murdering Nick with a sword, right? Blam!

It didn’t take too long for me to understand I react the same way to photographs.

And as you know, light controls most of the mood of a photo. Sure, so does body language, but when the two meet…

So, these are test shots. I was working on super controlled, film noirish lighting. Like the first Scary Self Portrait post I wanted the eyes to go entirely black, with the exception of two small, piercing, catch lights, made, this time, with an underpowered, tightly gridded monolight. The key light in the above photo is pointed down, off my right shoulder.This picture only uses one gridded mono light, positioned directly underneath my camera & pointed up. The grid is so tight & focused none of the shadow hits the wall.This one is the combination of the two. and as a bonus, here’s me in a luchador mask.

I made this wacky wacky photo shoot for a fun story the New York Times did on Extreme Cleaners.

Sally’s a regular germ-slayer!“Blue is for the loo. Pink is for the sink.”Aside from a minimal amount of bleach, she uses all green products, like toilet paper made from recycled material and Seventh Generation cleaner.

This photo even made it onto the New York Time’s home page for a bit!

The El Mateo!
Luchador mask courtesy of the limited edition “Weird Sports” book by Sol Neelman.

Check it out: I’m in good company.

What better way to sell aprons than to set stuff on fire, right?

We cracked a few eggs, too. LITERALLY!

So, if you’re a person who’s easily offended by exploding yolks, don’t go any further.

Seriously, though. The egg breaking photos are pretty awesome.

My neighbor Kristen Rigney owns City Sparrow where you can buy retro styled, HAND MADE, aprons & pot holders. …one pot holder actually got a little singed during this shoot.

The idea behind this shoot is to illustrate the follies of an unskilled housewife.

So, if you want one of her aprons, she’ll be selling them December 3rd at the Charm City Craft Mafia’s Holiday Heap.

..or online at www.etsy.com/shop/CitySparrow.

Let the eggsploding begin!The egg got everywhere. The ceiling, the floor 15 feet away from Kristen, on my shirt. I got a little of the white on my camera, too, but none in my hair, surprisingly. Obviously, Kristen wasn’t so lucky.

Here’s my specific entry, but I truly and whole heartedly recommend seeing some of the other photographers’ work being deconstructed. (each word is a link to a different post, by the way. Isn’t that super clever!?)

I got a call back in June from Red Bull Photofiles to photograph this promo stunt for Fowler’s U.S. Open stint. …and the photo above also ran in Red Bull’s new magazine The Red Bulletin.

In addition to a video crew, I was one of two assigned photographers. The other being Steve Boyle. He was down on the ground level and I was stationed up top. My options were somewhat limited, but I was guaranteed a pretty cool perspective.

The light was absolutely gorgeous!

…right up until Rickie Fowler got out of his SUV. And it stayed grey and drizzly until he got back in his SUV. If we have to search for silver linings, the light was ultra diffused. So… No Rickie Fowler raccoon eyes.

If you guys haven’t seen the Red Bulletin, it’s a pretty friggin’ cool magazine. Super-visual. I’m not just saying that because they’ve paid me once, either. It’s pretty legit.

http://mattrothphoto.photoshelter.com/gallery/Matt-Fouse-and-his-Chickens/G0000kdkGQ3GZk1c/

Recently I’ve been trying to make as many portraits as I can. That’s my theme for this year. PORTRAITS PORTRAITS PORTRAITS!

The idea is that I’ll have a new body of personal work to show off and, of course, a whole mess of mistakes and successes to learn from.

One thing I’ve dealt with recently is content. Recently, I’ve been forcing content into my lit work. Lets take this shoot, for example. I think the most beautiful image is the one up top. …granted, Mychael’s a beautiful man. The bottom line is, there’s really no “story” being told. This picture’s all about mood. The weird thing is, it was the easiest for me to make & think up. …so, I treat photos like this as plan “b” or “c.”

When I ask my friends for edits, they typically respond much better the moodier photos over the forced-content stuff. That sounds obvious, but I suffer from that classic photographer problem: I put too much stock in my effort.

After all, when all the lights are packed back up, and the armpit sweat has dried, the strongest image still wins.

So, thanks again Mychael for “sitting” for me.

If you want to see more images of Mychael and/or you want to buy prints, purchase a usage license, or get a t-shirt or coffee mug, among other things with Mychael’s picture on it, check out the gallery below:

http://mattrothphoto.photoshelter.com/gallery/Mychael-Wright/G000040NZiQlx1l4