Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share How Noir Zy Does Very Unique Boudoir Photography
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
How Noir Zy Does Very Unique Boudoir Photography
We’re streaming daily on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, and Spotify!
Hi Chris & Phoblographites,
Is that the right way to say it? It’s taken a fair bit of time for me to work up the courage to submit this to you, but I think I might have just what you want! I’m Noir Zy, no affiliation to Noiz, a photographic alter ego to an Australian photographer based in Melbourne. The anonymity is intentional and a part of who I am. I’ll do my best to write as Noir Zy, but for a moment, let’s hear from the creator.
Noir Zy came into existence a little over two years ago on the encouragement of my best friend, who wanted me to show my work, but having suffered a lot of depression, burnout, and incredible anxiety around photography at the time, I couldn’t bring myself to do it anymore. A combination of very high standards, frustration with the business, and just exhaustion from all the editing meant that even though I was doing my best work, I hated all of it. There was one thing I really enjoyed, though; the process of shooting. So I started to come up with a concept whose pieces I’d been playing with for years. (Officially, I’ve been a photographer at a professional level for about six years, counting Noir Zy.)
It needed to be repeatable, simple to set up and control, involves a deep understanding of light, but unique and crucially, involve no need for photoshop or conventional editing techniques. I always keep the raws, but they shouldn’t be needed. I did some research on some of my ideas and hit on smoke as a medium.
Smoke was something I’d played with before, even in my earliest studio work, as far as I could tell, and even now, nobody uses it except for the odd atmospheric. It’s an alluring substance, but you do need a proper smoke machine, something that can fill a warehouse, or it doesn’t work very well. 120 AU bucks later, and I had a machine that’s never stopped giving. It has been both the most frustrating and most magical part of the experience.
The rest of the style came together naturally. I needed something I hadn’t done a lot before but still involved people, that landed Boudoir as a genre; I didn’t want to deal with color, just light, so I chose black and white, and I didn’t have a studio, so people’s houses would become the studio. The name, Noisy Noir, shortened and spiced up a little, became Noir Zy. The point was the imperfections, back to Noir Zy.
I shoot smokey black and white noir boudoir. All of my work is explicitly shot in-camera. I work digital, but the Canon black and white processing have a real charm to it, and so those are my base prints! Kind of; I keep the raws, of course, just in case ;). And the settings on the camera are tweaked to jack up the contrast and apply some filters to improve skin impression. People who work with me get the entire collection shot on the day, warts and all. Yeah, I know, it’s breaking a cardinal rule of pro photography; I do a lot of that. It’s kind of my thing.
I used a Canon 5DMKII for the majority of my older work until it died; a veritable gramps at 350k images. I use the 5D MKIII at the moment. I’ve tried the Sony cameras, but they just don’t handle my needs that well and are hard to use. Plus, more importantly, Canon has the Nifty Fifty, which is my go-to lens. I have an 85mm f1.4 lens from Samyang that’s utterly gorgeous, but full manual shooting in smoke is nearly impossible, or at least is a craft I’m still getting good at, particularly with how small the canon viewfinder is. I shoot dual images; full-resolution raw and half resolution jpeg. Given that Noir Zy is more about web consumption, this is an acceptable compromise, and in-camera downscaling adds some sharpness. For lighting, I use an off-camera 480EXII on some cheap Chinese hardware. I have some wooden blinds from Bunnings taped to a cheap boom from eBay and a Chauvet Hurricane smoke machine. It’s the 800-watt model. Those alone can handle 90% of my needs.
My vision ...
View all episodes
By The PhoblographerWe’re streaming daily on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, and Spotify!
Hi Chris & Phoblographites,
Is that the right way to say it? It’s taken a fair bit of time for me to work up the courage to submit this to you, but I think I might have just what you want! I’m Noir Zy, no affiliation to Noiz, a photographic alter ego to an Australian photographer based in Melbourne. The anonymity is intentional and a part of who I am. I’ll do my best to write as Noir Zy, but for a moment, let’s hear from the creator.
Noir Zy came into existence a little over two years ago on the encouragement of my best friend, who wanted me to show my work, but having suffered a lot of depression, burnout, and incredible anxiety around photography at the time, I couldn’t bring myself to do it anymore. A combination of very high standards, frustration with the business, and just exhaustion from all the editing meant that even though I was doing my best work, I hated all of it. There was one thing I really enjoyed, though; the process of shooting. So I started to come up with a concept whose pieces I’d been playing with for years. (Officially, I’ve been a photographer at a professional level for about six years, counting Noir Zy.)
It needed to be repeatable, simple to set up and control, involves a deep understanding of light, but unique and crucially, involve no need for photoshop or conventional editing techniques. I always keep the raws, but they shouldn’t be needed. I did some research on some of my ideas and hit on smoke as a medium.
Smoke was something I’d played with before, even in my earliest studio work, as far as I could tell, and even now, nobody uses it except for the odd atmospheric. It’s an alluring substance, but you do need a proper smoke machine, something that can fill a warehouse, or it doesn’t work very well. 120 AU bucks later, and I had a machine that’s never stopped giving. It has been both the most frustrating and most magical part of the experience.
The rest of the style came together naturally. I needed something I hadn’t done a lot before but still involved people, that landed Boudoir as a genre; I didn’t want to deal with color, just light, so I chose black and white, and I didn’t have a studio, so people’s houses would become the studio. The name, Noisy Noir, shortened and spiced up a little, became Noir Zy. The point was the imperfections, back to Noir Zy.
I shoot smokey black and white noir boudoir. All of my work is explicitly shot in-camera. I work digital, but the Canon black and white processing have a real charm to it, and so those are my base prints! Kind of; I keep the raws, of course, just in case ;). And the settings on the camera are tweaked to jack up the contrast and apply some filters to improve skin impression. People who work with me get the entire collection shot on the day, warts and all. Yeah, I know, it’s breaking a cardinal rule of pro photography; I do a lot of that. It’s kind of my thing.
I used a Canon 5DMKII for the majority of my older work until it died; a veritable gramps at 350k images. I use the 5D MKIII at the moment. I’ve tried the Sony cameras, but they just don’t handle my needs that well and are hard to use. Plus, more importantly, Canon has the Nifty Fifty, which is my go-to lens. I have an 85mm f1.4 lens from Samyang that’s utterly gorgeous, but full manual shooting in smoke is nearly impossible, or at least is a craft I’m still getting good at, particularly with how small the canon viewfinder is. I shoot dual images; full-resolution raw and half resolution jpeg. Given that Noir Zy is more about web consumption, this is an acceptable compromise, and in-camera downscaling adds some sharpness. For lighting, I use an off-camera 480EXII on some cheap Chinese hardware. I have some wooden blinds from Bunnings taped to a cheap boom from eBay and a Chauvet Hurricane smoke machine. It’s the 800-watt model. Those alone can handle 90% of my needs.
My vision ...