Creating a Photography Tableau Image
Shooting a tableau was quite the daunting task. It was one of the final photography assignments given to my classmates and me at the Centre for Arts and Technology in Kelowna. When I was given this assignment I had to find out what tableau photography is. A tableau is stand alone image that tells a story; it usually includes a huge production phase.
Planning a tableau
At first I struggled coming up with and idea for my tableau and then late on night I got the idea of recreating The Last Supper Painting and I got super excited about it. Immediately after getting the idea, I started planning out how I could achieve this in the number of days I had left to complete the assignment. I made myself a schedule listing things I would need and days that I would have to finish certain tasks. Some of the immediate things to do were finding a place to shoot and planning how much of the photo I want to remake, and what to keep the same. I decided to shoot in the school studio. I also decided I wanted everyone’s clothes modern except for Jesus’ and I wanted all the posing to be the same as in the painting.
Test Shooting
The next Thursday I did the test lighting in the studio. I used some mannequins for people and set up a few reflectors where my background would be. Here is a shot from my initial testing.
Next I needed to somehow convince 13 people to be in my photo. I convinced five friends to help me and for the other 8 people I emailed Deja Vu modelling agency and asked if any models would be interested in being in my tableau, and to my surprise, about ten people responded positively! To make the scene contemporary, I choose outfits that most people would own. I also had to paint a background so I wouldn’t have to composite a background in. I spent half a weekend painting some wooden flats with the help of a couple people. Here’s a photo of my girlfriend helping me paint.
After I had arranged locations, backgrounds, models, and costumes, I tested lighting and then I was ready for the shoot. Because of all my organization ahead of time my shoot ran smoothly. And thanks to my pre-planning and organization, I had all the models in and out in around an hour and twenty minutes. Here is the unedited shot that I took.
I only did a bit of editing to the photo. See if you can spot the changes here.
Josh Wielinga 