What could be more fun than putting a model into a straitjacket for a photo shoot? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Can you sense I had fun with this idea? This idea was born about a year ago when I was trying to find a fun shoot ideas to do that I hadn’t seen replicated online a dozen or more times. Although coming up with a completely original idea for a shoot is nearly impossible, with a little digging around I discovered very few images related to my idea and even fewer videos. Woohoo! – made it over the first hurdle.
The second hurdle is finding a willing model. My good friend Alecia commented on a picture I posted that she wanted to do a themed shoot. Silly rabbit! She should know better than to tempt me. I contacted her and ran a few ideas I had in mind for shoots and we settled on the straitjacket idea (with a little persuasive begging from me). I knew the idea had the potential for varying degrees of emotional expression from the model. I also knew Alecia would be a perfect fit for this idea. She is an incredibly creative person herself and can get into character very easily and convincingly. Woohoo! - second hurdle down.
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The third hurdle is finding appropriate costumes and props. A genuine straitjacket is prohibitively expensive to purchase for one simple photo shoot. I think the lowest priced genuine jacket was a little over $200. Plan B, take to social media and see if I can get lucky! Who knows, maybe one of my friends actually has one (…and as an aside, a friend of mine corrected my request on social media for a straight jacket. Indeed, it is spelled ‘straitjacket’ and is one word. Thank you Paul!) . No traction with plan B. Plan C, costume straitjacket. My go-to costume store didn’t carry anything close to resembling a straitjacket. Most of the costume straitjackets I saw online were so obviously ‘costumes’ that I didn’t think they would be very convincing. I did, however, find a decent looking jacket on Wish that turned out to be about as good as I was going to get for the price. Since I wanted the images to look realistic, I needed to either find or make a padded room. I decided to make a room, or at least a corner of a room.
For the construction of the room, I purchased two 4 feet by 8 feet composite boards and also purchased some wall insulation. After placing the insulation on the boards, I covered the insulation and boards with plain white king-size flat sheets for the walls of the room. I placed a comforter on the ground and covered that with another white sheet for the floor of the room. All in all, I think the cost for this shoot was somewhere around $60 or $70 (closer to $100 if you include the jacket). Since I purchased several pieces for the shoot over the span of several months, I honestly lost track of the final cost, but compared to most of my other ideas, this one was on the pricier side.
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Once everything was set up inside of a garage, all that was left was taking images and playing with different poses and ideas. For most of the images, I simply flooded the scene with lights from just about every angle. I wanted the look of a room that was so bright with no relief that the feeling of the room itself would drive someone crazy. An overhead bare flash with no modifier worked perfectly to simulate a ceiling light. The fact that we only created a corner of a room with no ceiling left open the option of some other creative use of lighting and camera angles. Despite being bound-up for the majority of the shoot (which I probably couldn’t have done) Alecia did her thing and played the part to perfection.
Despite this shoot costing more than my normal shoots, it was well worth it! This idea was also fun because I got to work with my hands and build a corner of a room. I enjoyed that just as much as the actual shoot. Plus, I’m not a drinker and I rarely gamble so photography seems like a decent vice to spend money on. Although I’m not quite sure what I can do with all of the insulation leftover from the shoot, the wooden boards have come in handy for other ideas – like aluminum foil. Lots of aluminum foil.
As always, get out of your comfort zone, build some props for an idea, and have fun. If you don’t find a way to express your creativity, you may just go insane!
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