On initiations and cults

At the beginning of April, one magic Sunday, I rented a large studio as I had set up a large nude group shoot.

For this purpose, I needed more space and the ability to make several sets to maximize what I could produce that day.

One of my ideas was to create a make-believe image of a cult or an initiation ceremony.

I found a lady on FB marketplace who rented out 40 brass candleholders, bought a ton of candles, and then found a bunch of (not that expensive) black capes on Amazon.

Then I asked the models if they could bring masks—and I had a few extras for those who didn’t have one.

I wanted to superimpose this onto a background that conjures up images of something sinister—or cool—so I purchased a pack of premade backgrounds with arches and settled on 3-4 I liked before the shoot.

Just as we were about to start, the circuits blew out, and we had no electricity for lamps.

We frantically started to look for the circuit breakers, but they were nowhere to be found.

So, I called the studio managers and left some frantic phone messages. It ended up taking about 90 minutes before power was restored.

The models were getting annoyed, many having to travel a considerable amount of time.

I made a beeline for my studio and fetched my Profoto B10 battery flash. I decided to start with the Initiation picture, as this needed much less light because of the candles.

We did three variants with three different models of getting “initiated.”

Above you can see CB modeling from the third set, where everyone wears masks.

If you watch the BTS movie (Photographers and Vault tiers only), you can see a guy in a down jacket carrying some adapters, so we could use the 60 AMP power outlets and get on with it.

Then we set up another idea I had with the column of girls marching past the main character, Reikie Rose.
In retrospect, I should have trained in marching with the girls in advance (if you watch the behind the scenes movie you can see why.)

There is a psychological barrier to starting to walk when the person in front of you is not (yet) moving, and with the shutter speed I had, I could have used more speed.

The downside of this studio is that it’s enormous and blacked out. So it’s either A LOT of light or none at all, which makes video a bit of a challenge.

These were the models:

@cb.modelling, @abtonnesenfreelance, @zsanofsweden, @simoneejlifmodel, @dianaolsenpoledance, @belzen_model, @dixie_model3, @ylva_maia, @the_endless_sinner, @sabrina_stenbaek, @rigmor_aa, @wianamodel, @reikierosemodeling