The brief
Farrokh Chothia was on a commercial shoot that finished in half the time he had estimated, ‘thanks largly to our model for the day, Malaika,’ he says. ‘She was so good that I got all I needed for the client with a couple of hours to spare. The sky was turning nice and moody, like a monsoon painting, so I asked Malaika if we cloud try one or two shots for our books. She had on a white shirt, which would have burnt out with the light I was going to use, so the she took it off and we went f or a classic jeans-and-bra look.’
The location
The beach is a favorite location for Forrokh. ‘It’s deeply connected to the human psyche - a meeting place of earth, water, wind and light. As a photographer, these elements are a gift for me to use, as I want. Sometime I manipulate one of them as in this case – or use an excess of one of these over the others, shooting at midday with a blazing sun overhead, for example.’
Composition
By shooting from a low angle, Farrokh has given his subject a sense of power and dominance. He’s included as much as he could of the dramatic sky, with just enough of the sea to give a feel of the location. The model’s pose combines energy with elegance and the overall impact of the shot is very much helped by the strong contrast of light and shadow on her body.
Lighting and technique
A crucial element to the success of this picture is the creative mix of natural and artificial light. Farrokh first took a reading from the clouds using a spot meter, and calculated the exposure needed to register them as a darkish grey – clouds that are backlit by the sun tend to the bright. This exposure, 1/250sec at f/16, would have rendered the subject as a near silhouette, so he lit her with a Norman 200 battery-powered strobe, held by an assistant above and to the right of the camera. The power of the flash was adjusted to give an incident reading of f1/16 off the model’s face, resulting in a final, balance exposure.
Fact file
Photographer : Farrokh Chothia
Client : Photographer’s and model’s portfolios
Model : Malaika Arora
Location : Manori beach,
Near Bombay, India
Time of day : Sunset
Technical details
Camera : Nikon F3
Lens : 55mm
Film : Kodak Tri X rated at iso 200
Exposure : 1/250sec at f/16