I listen to an excellent German photo podcast called “Happy Shooting“. The podcast is hosted by Chris Marquardt and Boris Nienke, two photographers who are very active in the podosphere and blogosphere. The Happy Shooting podcast is published weekly (for over nine year snow, the show number is in the 370s…) and every two weeks Chris and Boris hand out a new photo task. The task always consists of one word and one is free to participate and interpret the task as far-stretched as you like. The winner of the contest is determined by the dice, the image critiqued during the show.

This week’s topic is “Haube”, which is German for “hood”, “cap” or “bonnet”. I took the challenge and made my own version. The image you see above is titled “Hau-B”. That is a play on words (in German, therefore quite cheesy to write about in in English…) and means “Ich haue das B” – “I strike the B note”.

I shot the images in my studio against a white backdrop. The camera was on a tripod and I triggered it using a remote control which I held in my left hand. That way I could hide the remote easily behind the neck of the bass guitar. Then it was just a question of fooling around heavily and triggering the camera at the right moment. It was a fun, yet odd experience. Jumping, making faces and acting as if you were rocking like hell while standing on a stage with a wild crowd in front of you….

The rough workflow to create this image was as follows:

• studio setup (camera on tripod, manual, 36 mm, f3.2, 1/160s, ISO 100). Unfortunately I can’t sync faster than 1/160s with the studio flashes I have.
• shooting, triggered with this wireless remote control
• importing and sorting in Lightroom
• edit in Lightroom: Brush tool set to maximum exposure and maximum lights
• edit in Photoshop: erasing the last contours, which could not be removed with Lightroom’s brush tool
• creating the collage in Photoshop

And here is the making-of-video: