Pose, frown, shoot, laugh

Hrvoje and I have been cooperating for the last few years. He is famous Croatian artist making both paintings and sculptures. Our shootings usually look more like a stand-up comedy rather than some serious business. I usually come with some rough idea how pictures should look like...and when I say rough, I even might be exaggerating :).Maybe it would be better to say I come with an idea of a direction in which we should go. During the whole shooting, we have some sort of brainstorming, popping and crossing our ideas, so that the result is the perfect mixture of us both.

This shooting was something new for both of us. I have just recently acquired a new set of lightning strobes that I was eager to test in a place other than studio. This seemed like a perfect opportunity...a giant empty riding hall at 10 pm.

First we had to set up the whole set...thankfully, his wife Ivana was also there, helping us big time! While Iva was doing makeup on Hrvoje, Ivana and I were the heavy lifters. We had to get a lot of stuff inside. Bronze sculptures weighting over 20 kg each, whole bunch of photo equipment, old sculpting stand, mirror (that we used later as a bouncer instead of having it in the picture as I first have imagined :) )...and God knows what else.

And then, the magnificent madame Etoile :) I can't help myself, I love that mare! She was still the whole time, didn't fear the lights, or the dark surrounding them. And the best of all, obviously she had some ideas as well, since we managed to make some pictures of her trying to look deep into the eyes of a sculptured horse that was placed on the stand (after that she tried to chew part of its head and lick it).

What I had in mind for this shooting was to present Hrvoje as a dark, introverted artist, instead of a romantic, flying in the clouds kind that we used to do before. I wanted his face to be a bit dry and his look to be determined and serious. In that shooting he was the ruler of his creativity, not the other way around. And then, as a cherry on top, we took a picture inspired by Dr. House, Hrvoje holding his head a bit down and looking straight into the camera.

As I was taking pictures of Hrvoje, Iva and Ivana were the assistants, jumping around and helping us. The part that I loved the most was when they had to produce significant noise and distraction so that the mare would lift her ears (since she was obviously boring herself to death and put them aside, looking like a sleeping donkey). They were running and jumping and if somebody filmed that... :)