Protecting Sharks with Jhené Aiko for The Humane Society
Those of you who follow my work know that creating art for important causes has always been critical to the SlickforceStudio mission. So it is with great pleasure that we recently teamed up with The Humane Society of the United States and HS International for their latest campaign, featuring singer/songwriter Jhené Aiko.
Ms. Aiko is very passionate about animals and nature—and all things aquatic—so she was the perfect face for HSUS’ new campaign to stop inhumane shark hunting. Tens of millions of sharks are killed each year due to the demand of shark fin soup. Humane Society Campaign manager Amber Morasse wanted a concept that was as striking as it was effective. We discussed several ideas before finally settling on a dramatic night ocean scene with Jhené rising above the surface of the water like a shark.
Besides the obvious risks to talent, shooting in an actual ocean isn’t terribly practical. There’s nowhere to place backlights and you’re certainly not going to run electricity in the deep blue sea. So we opted for a much more controlled environment: a large swimming pool. As you’ll see in the behind-the-scenes video below, our first challenge was turning a bright daylight location into a night scene. The second was getting the lights and camera into the water.
It was a pleasure working with Jhené, and I applaud her for using her celebrity to spread awareness of these wonderful creatures’ plight. I want to thank Amber and The Humane Society for involving us in this important project, and the SlickforceStudio team for getting wet for a good cause.
Visit hsi.org to find out how you can help.
WARNING: This setup was achieved by trained professionals. Do not attempt to bring lights near water without proper electrical safety training.
(Click here for further info about safely working around water.)
As many of you know, I was a cinematographer and a gaffer for several years before moving into professional photography. Movie lights draw an extremely high current (measured in Amps) due to their size and light output—and electrocution is a very real concern. As a result, my team and I have been through rigorous electrical-safety training throughout the years. We also teach electrical safety at our PhotoKamp workshops.
To be clear, there is always a risk when mixing electricity and water . It doesn’t have to be a water concept, it could simply start raining on your outdoor shoot. You can see in our setup that we had a single light “in” the pool. The other lights were safely placed (and heavily sand-bagged) on dry land. The light that I brought into the pool was on a sturdy C-stand, ratcheted down tightly, with about 120 lbs. of sandbags on it, both on the base and higher to distribute the weight evenly. The feeder cable was then looped around the stand arm and run up through the frame of the overhead silk, then dropped down to the ballast on dry land, well away from the water. The 1200w/s Profoto ballast was then plugged into a surge protector, which was itself plugged into a pool-safe GFCI outlet (the same ones used for underwater pool lighting fixtures). You can read more about ground-fault interrupters around swimming pools here: http://blog.poolcenter.com/article.aspx?articleid=6065 On top of these multiple layers of protection, you’ll notice we kept slack on the cable (some may have wondered why we didn’t pull it tighter). This prevents cable tension and decreases the risk of the light being knocked over should someone bump into it. We also have this area roped off and continuously manned to minimize human error.
My team and I take electrical safety extremely seriously, and you should never take a chance until you’ve been trained by an expert. Any misjudgments are most certainly errors that you only get to make once. Safety above all else!
CREDITS:
Model: Jhené Aiko
Photographer: Nick Saglimbeni
Makeup: Felicia La Tour
Production Stills: Joyce Park & Joey Valenti
Videography: Joey Valenti & Ludovica Isidori
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