CHRIS SAUNDERS

Matt Howden, aka Sieben is, to quote him, a "Record producer, composer, music arranger, performer, programmer, film scorer. Sock puppet. I loop it and layer it, I beat it, I pluck it. It being my violin." Matt plays, records, and performs completely solo and...oh sod it, just watch a video to get an idea....

I first met Matt about year ago when I photographed him for an interview with Counterfeit Magazine. The photos came out ok & Matt mentioned that at some point he'd like some more doing when his next album comes out.  At the end of last year the email arrives. I ask him if he's anything in mind for the kind of thing he'd like for the shots..

"Not really. But I do like Gregory Crewdson..."

"Oh do you now", I laughed. Crewdson is one of my favourite photographers and for anyone unaware of his work his pictures are produced with a crew of up to 60 people, use up to 80 lights with some on cranes, are often shot on huge soundstages, take up to 4 days to set up, are shot on a 10x8 camera, & have a budget of around a quarter of a million dollars. Per shot. Basically it's a movie set but with the end result being one frame, not 24 per second. Crewdson doesn't even light or take the shot himself, he's a film director in essence, instructing the technicians around him to help get the image he has in his mind into the camera.

"We can do it at my house" Matt says "but I'm not flooding my living room.."

I'm obviously aware given the above mentioned details of Crewdson's shoots that there's no way I could replicate the effect his pictures have. I have 3 lights, a crew of myself and hopefully one other person around to assist, a miniscule budget in comparison, no huge soundstage with specially constructed set, and one day to get a range of shots. And most pertinently I don't have his imagination. But a visit to Matt's house does get me thinking that I could possibly pull off a pastiche of his work to a certain extent, albeit a very simple one.

I get the Crewdson books out & reacquaint myself with the visual motifs he likes to use throughout a lot of his work. Lampshades - lots of them, different colour temperatures of lighting, unseen presences, the use of yellowy orange light against blue walls, strange scenes in gardens, living rooms, & bedrooms, people in dazed, transfixed, or anxious states, shafts of light coming through open doors etc etc...

So with a volunteer assistant, Nina (who really gets into the spirit later on), we set about it. I couldn't really attempt to really do a proper Crewdson with any of the interior shots, I was going to save that for a shot in Matt's garden..

First set up I initially thought had quite a bit of potential. Amazing lampshade in Matt's bedroom & I thought I did ok technically but it looks a bit dull. Bit of a failure this one therefore..

2nd shot on the stairs came out much better. Shaft of light & lamp both present & correct.  The X-Files/Close Encounters style light coming from the room behind him was a *nightmare* to get looking right though..

The 3rd shot I wanted to do out in the garden had to be postponed as it was blowing a gale outside plus it was getting too dark, so we decide to do that at a later date. I wing it & on the spur of the moment combine 2 ideas I had - a lot of lamps & George the cat, into one.  Bit of a daft pic this & I didn't really like it much at first but it's grown on me a bit. This has the most retouching I've ever done on a shot.  I won't go into details because I don't like knowing what the original image looked like from any other photographer - obviously the power leads from the lights have gone but that's all I'll say. It's the end result that counts, but the original looks *very* different...

So the last shot, again I'm not going to go into details about how it was shot, it should be fairly obvious if you look closely enough. I had access to a smoke machine (ok, not the conventional sort used on film sets, more the human kind), lots of lamps again, a subject willing to possibly look daft if the shot doesn't work in the end, and an assistant who not only braved a horrendous hangover, but after initially having the idea of her in tight black clothes to get a good silhouette said "No. I'll wear a baby doll nightie. And I'll do it in bare feet". OK... It was *freezing* when we did the shot, hence the breath around her head.

I really am quite pleased with this one. There is an idea behind it, like there seems to be in all of Crewdson's shots, but like him I'm not telling.  Click here & scroll along to see it a bit bigger .

A few people have asked me whether I'm pissed off at being asked to pastiche someone else's work rather than use my own style (by which they really mean, without knowing it, mix Steve Gullick, Perou, Kevin Westenberg together and be nowhere near as good as any of them).  Not at all, I don't think any of the shots come really close to looking like Crewdson's do, either in style (except maybe the last one) or standard, but I'm nevertheless pleased with most of them.  I do like it when the subject has a good awareness of visuals for a start, and it did take me back to my college days when we'd occasionally get set projects where we'd be asked to copy another photographer's lighting.  I'd always learn more technically on these projects than on any other. I'm always learning and learned a lot doing this...

Thanks to Matt for making me think a lot, and to Nina for services above and beyond the call of duty.

-----