Hamlet & Ghost . Saratoga Springs / NY

About This Shoot

The workable photographic area at Hamlet and Ghost was very limited, by that I mean the angles in order to create and capture the scene were very tight and acute, slightly to the left or right and the shot would be exposed to seemingly ordinary spaces or unworkable content which would break the narrative of the image.

The challenge here is to use and recreate the small area you have to work with into as many bite size portions and different versions of itself as you can without slipping into the trap of repeating yourself. Keeping a consistent atmosphere is key to these shots, actual bar areas are particularly tricky to photograph since they generally contain a lot of equipment / surfaces / fridges etc which may not be so pleasing to an architectural shot, you can't thin them out so you have to manufacture the best angles while hiding much of what you can't remove through careful composition. On several occasions I have dismantled a shot only to spot rolls of till receipts or hidden trays lurking among the bottles and mixers. It pays to be ultra thorough when shooting bars!

I used Lowell Omni and Pro Lights to carefully create a late afternoon / early evening ambiance for the setting, there were a million reflections to cater for with tiled walls, glasses, bottles, shiny cocktails shakers etc so a lot of the lighting set ups had to be masked together in post, nailing these in one shot would have been a pointless pursuit.