Zero Gravity from Femalography series, 2004
I am posting this photo as there have been some requests on Tweeter to talk about it. So here it is guys.
I bet that you are more interested in knowing how to do it. Allow me to talk about the idea first, as it is much, much more interesting for me than the technical part. When I made my sketch, I was imagining the world without gravity. Everything would be floating in the air. The question was, where would I set it? As I just went partying at this one cool club in Jakarta two weeks before, I decided to do the shoot there.
I called Dessy Mulasari, one of my favorite models. I also called my fashion designer friend to borrow the dress. After everything was set, I came to the location with lots of assistants. We got the location for free (being well known DOES have some advantages).
The way I shot it was pretty simple. First, I locked the camera on tripod and frame my picture. I then practice with Dessy to get her natural falling movement. She was actually falling from a table and landed on a matras. Believe me, it hurt like hell (whenever you ask a model to do a crazy pose, do it yourself first). So I decided that we would only do it several times, I didn’t want to kill my dear model. Satisfied with our little practice, we move to the difficult part: throwing the glasses and the chair at the background. All assistants did it. The trick was simple. We threw it vertically, so it has a split second ‘freeze’ moment before it started to fall again. At that moment, the glass would stop, but the water still move a bit. So we would get a still glass with spilling water. That’s exactly when I should press the shutter. It’s all about timing and coordination with the model and all assistants.
It’s not an easy shot, but with a little practice, you can do it too. Good luck guys.
PS. If you wanna buy one of the 10 (ten) worldwide limited edition of this picture, it is for sale. Just drop me a message.