The Big Freeze

A few days ago I finally got round to trying an idea I've had in the back of my mind for ages, namely Cybermen in the freezer.
This was inspired by the Cybermen using cryogenic "Tombs" to hibernate for long periods of time in "Tomb of the Cybermen" and "Attack of the Cybermen".
Timing was critical for shooting this picture, as I had to wait until the freezer was mostly empty so I would have room to set up and light the shot.

More after the jump.


I Started by writing down some initial ideas. I new I would have to light the freezer, to impart a little "drama", and I knew I wanted to gel the background light "cool" (i.e. blue) and the key light "warm", also I knew I wanted to shoot wide-angle to get as much of the freezer interior in shot as possible. And, inspired by some of Matt Brooker's Dalek shots using the Sigma 10-20mm Ultra Wide Angle lens to shoot close up, I thought I'd use that as my starting point.

First step was to take a quick test shot, just using ambient light;



Then I needed to test the light I was going to use to light the freezer interior.



And it's WAY over exposed. Never mind, it was just a guess. So "I dropped my ISO from 400 to 100 and stopped down from f5.6 to f8.



That's better. Now to set up the key light;



Looks ok.

Now both lights together;



This was at f8 1/320 second and ISO 100. It's maybe a touch dark but nothing that couldn't be fixed by pushing the exposure up a little in my RAW processor, or opening by aperture a little.
At this point I've gelled flashes and set my white balance to "Tungsten" to shift the overall colour balance towards blue.

Then it were just a case of setting up the Cybermen and fire away



Then it was just a case of shooting as many variations as possible. I started with the Sigma 10-20mm Ultra wide, switched to the 17-55 f2.8 zoom and finished with the Tamron 90mm for a tighter frame.

Here's a wider shot showing my scruffy freezer and the lightstand set-up I used.



I hope this has been of some interest and If you have any questions please ask away.