This year marked year 10 of my relationship with SuperUltra. I first worked with them on a project for the SABS (South African Bureau of Standards) a few months before I left for my internship with Zack Arias in the United States. Want to read about all of that? You can go here.

Back then they were known by the name “Terrestrial” and I made this portrait of one of the Co-Founders, Tasos Calantzis. You can view it here.

So a few weeks ago when I saw Anya (the other Co-Founder) and Tasos (they are married) I suggested to them that we make an image inspired by this Ryan Schude Tableau Vivant.

Now, look, I am no Ryan Schude and we were a team of 3 lighting and taking the image, so please don’t compare. I do however think we did a pretty good job considering. :) I love Ryan’s image and I am really just borrowing inspiration here and trying to make it my own in some way. Anyway, let’s continue.
Anya and Tasos were game and they asked everyone else on the team of employees if they would be keen to join and a couple days later we were figuring out dates and times that we would all be available.

So, last week on the 28th of November 2024 we met up to make - what I think - was a rather ambitious photo. The largest photo that I’ve attempted to make in my career and the most lighting I’ve used. I could not have done any of this without the help of André Badenhorst and Chris dos Santos who have become some really sought after photographers and lighting techs. Veritable legends! Thanks dudes!

In total we used 14 lights. The tricky thing about the image was that we had to use strobe lighting and for that reason we had to group lights together. Ideally you would like to light a scene like this with constant lights so that you are able to control each light for each element of the scene, but I think regardless of that limitation we got a banger image.

I combined 4 images in total for the final shot and had to remove some light stands and modifiers, but other than that, I did most of my edit in Lightroom for the color adjustments etc.

I am also attaching this short screen recording for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks for reading