DAY 235

PORTRAITS

Slow Synch Strobe

IAN KELLY, ACTOR AND WRITER

This is another portrait from my Brits off Broadway series of the talented actor and writer Ian Kelly. It was to illustrate his performance in Cooking for Kings, the one-man show he had written, where he actually cooks on stage and portrays the life and times of the first celebrity chef, Antonin Carême. I came up with the visual of Ian juggling kitchen utensils and a cleaver, to exemplify his dexterity in doing many things all at once, while remaining calm and confident.

The actual photographic technique is achieved by slowing the shutter speed to allow moving objects to create a blur but also using strobe to freeze them in motion at the same time—a double exposure of sorts.

We could not make this image in one shot, so the portrait was shot on film first; then we tested the light and blurred juggling by proofing it on a Polaroid. Next, I shot several exposures of the different items at different points in the air. Later, I scanned the negatives of those exposures into Photoshop, where I pasted the strainer above his head from another exposure into the main portrait file, creating one image. The end effect was as I imagined, and also shot in a safer way. Ian did not have to juggle a cleaver, but he appeared as if he was, which in effect is what acting is all about. —SA