Mmmmmmm

It's time to dive back into the archive. This one is from 1999. Shot on film, it was pretty memorable because I had an idea that was going to take a fair bit of work to pull together... it was also going to need time for the shoot...something that was often a luxury...and it all worked. No Photoshop in this one folks...it's straight out of the camera.

Canon EOS 1n with 17-35 f2.8 zoom. Kodacolor 400. Taken August 1999 for The Advocate Newspaper.

Winners are grinners. The shot was taken to illustrate a story about this man (sorry I can't remember his name) who won a large cash prize in a competition...I think to find a rare blue-coloured M&M.

Tens of thousands of the sweet treats would have been searched through during the competition...hence my idea for a "sea" of the multi-coloured buttons. I knew I wanted the subject to look to be "buried". But how do I do it? M&Ms are slippery little suckers.

The key was finding a way for the subject to remain still and also relatively comfortable for an extended period of time to allow the "sea" to be created. The answer was to sit him on the stairs with his neck at floor level. It was a huge bonus to have nice even light spilling onto the stairs from a nearby window (back then I had no capacity for off-camera flash).

A large sheet of stiff cardboard (pilfered from the end of a reel of newsprint in the paper's pressroom) was used to create an artificial floor. A hole was cut for the subject's head and a tea towel was used to create a seal around his neck. The M&Ms were then poured into place...the runaways collected and repositioned.

I then had to climb down into the stairwell (without bumping the setup) to achieve the low viewpoint. Several shots were taken, and with a reporter acting as a candy wrangler, this was the end result.

Got to love it when a plan comes together.

Catch you next week.