The Shot

This week I Assisted at a hospital and rehab center in Azel, Texas.
The shot I am going to show you today was of a Dr. giving a steroid shot to a patient in the Endoscopy center of the hospital.

We got to the location about 20 minutes before the dr. so we could scout. After looking through several rooms we were pointed towards one of the main "procedure" rooms. In this room was a lot of equipment and electronic equipment that would be used to perform various fases of whatever needed to be done to the patient.

The patient for this set up was to be the nurse who worked in that particular part of the hospital.
She put on a gown and rolled up the back of her scrubs so her back was exposed and we wheeled her into the room. Next we moved all of the equipment and electronics into place, following the direction of the dr. who would normally perform the procedures.

All pretty simple up until now. Now for the lighting. The goal was to create a dramatic portrait of this dr. giving the shot so we lit it from one side only, and left the other side completely dark.
The next issue we faced was a bare wall behind the dr. A light with a snoot and a grid set up right alongside the wall gave it a streaking effect and gave something interesting to look at instead of just a semi-black wall.

We tried a few shots like this and decided to make one last adjustment. We added a 3rd light with a snoot and blue gel, aimed at the instrument that was directly in the foreground.
For some reason blue always makes things look more scientific or medical. I've never understood why really but it is almost a given that if you are doing a medical shot you will use a blue gel...

Here is the resulting shot with all the lights in place:

Here are some shots of the lighting setup we used:

In this image you can see the light used to streak on the wall and the light used to hit the right side of the instrumentation in the foreground.

In this image you can see the main light, hitting the dr. from the left side and leaving the right side dark.

By leaving the right side of the image dark it created a very dramatic scene. However at the same time, the streaking light in the background and the blue light - both coming from the right side of the photo help to create balance in the image.

Hope you enjoyed the little "show and tell" session for today.