I’ve been a fan of Chelsea Wolfe’s music since I first heard “Moses” off of her first album, nearly a decade ago. I first began collaborating with her in 2013 on her Unknown Rooms acoustic tour, and we’ve since shot together eight times. Whenever she heads out on a tour I make it a point to not only catch her show but also squeeze in a quick shoot. This past month I drove up to Detroit to catch her American Darkness tour at Small’s for some conversation, music, and of course photos.
Chelsea had spotted some trees growing through the barbed wire fence behind the venue and asked to shoot there for the first look. I started off by shooting a few digital pinhole images before opting for a low, wide angle lens. In Lightroom I decided to give this set a duotone treatment with solarized orange shadows. I liked how it gives the appearance of a fire burning from within.
If you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time you know that I typically go into a shoot with little to no idea of what I want to do, conceptually speaking. This time I decided to change things up and do my homework. Though I had already listened to her latest album (The Birth of Violence) several times, I revisited it looking for themes to incorporate into the session. One of her songs, “When Anger Turns to Honey”, worked perfectly with my Strata honey explorations.
Putting my Studio Anywhere ethos to work I quickly set up a makeshift studio in the green room (see below). With one light, some plexiglass and of course, honey, and I was up and running. My favorite thing about honey is how it refracts light. In post I decided to give the image a green wash (in the vein of Dan Winters) in order to complement the golden hue of the honey.
Finally I shot some warped reflections in mylar. I’ve been experimenting with crumpling or cutting it to warp the reflection. There really are infinite possibilities when working with the material. These type of experiments are precisely the type of images that we’ll be exploring in my Creative Portraiture Workshop tour, which is hitting Columbus, New York, and London in 2020. For more info go to https://www.nickfancher.com/workshops. The early bird rate is in effect for two more weeks.