Rangefinder Magazine
September 2006

Hristo Shindov by Larry Brownstein
“Under the Bridge” & Other Realistic Fantasies

Hristo Shindov’s love of music led him to a career in photography. He grew up in Bulgaria, and many of his friends were musicians. Aware that his talent was not in music, he began, instead, to take photos of his friends. Before long the photos were good enough that his friends began to use them for promotional purposes. But Hristo felt like he could do better, and after a six-month stint as an exchange student in the United States, he set his sights on studying photography. He chose the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California.

Hristo and I met in early June, just before he needed to turn his attention to his final exams. He’ll graduate in October, but don’t expect to see student-quality work in his portfolio. This is one student who knows where he wants to go—big budget advertising work. And he knows where he wants to do it—New York City. He’s already planning the move, and his portfolio is up to the task.

His portfolio leads with four images from his Under The Bridge series. It’s a visually sophisticated series that highlights his ability to conceive an image, scout locations, cast the proper talent, light like a pro and perform Photoshop miracles to pull it all together.

He gives a great deal of credit to his Brooks education and a special nod to instructor Bill Robbins, whose class he credits for opening his eyes to the business side of the photo world. He is also very grateful for having had the chance to intern in Mark Seliger’s studio in midtown Manhattan. During the two months at Seliger’s studio, he witnessed both the art and the business of photography taking place at the highest level. He saw how to work with celebrities, and how to get the most from subjects.

He recalled how Seliger would often jump on set and act out what he wanted. He also learned the more practical aspects of the business, such as working with rental houses and how postproduction was done.

Last Christmas Hristo was back in New York, where he shot the backgrounds of what eventually became the Under The Bridge series. From the start, he knew that these images of deserted streets in Brooklyn would be used in composites.

“I wanted to do a complete story, showing what you might find on these streets at three in the morning,” he explains.

Hristo went with a friend to the Williamsburg Bridge at night. He photographed these images with a Rollei 6001 using Kodak Portra 160 NC film. The exposures were about one minute long, and Hristo moved around a Neutral Density filter during the exposure in an attempt to hold back the hot areas such as the sky and the lights. The moon was high and worked as a fill light, giving sufficient illumination to all areas of the scene. He also used Photoshop to lighten and add detail to the sky.

While he was there at 3:00 a.m., he saw three black Lincoln Town Cars parked in front of an abandoned building, with their engines running and their lights on. This not only unsettled him as he imagined what might be transpiring in the cars at that unseemly hour, but it also inspired him. Ultimately, the experience would be the genesis of the dark story lines that the series depicts.

One image shows a pimp with two of his ladies. In another, a tattooed gang member reaches for his gun. In another, a bruised and scarred addict plunges a syringe into his arm.

One image shows a john with his clothes awry; his wallet is out and he is paying a prostitute. The last of the series shows three people with a black suitcase waiting with trepidation.

One of the challenges for Hristo was budget—or the lack of it. Hristo works full-time to cover his tuition, and there’s little money left for modeling fees, props and other expenses.

Fortunately, he is able to use Brooks’ lighting equipment as well as the school studio. To save money, he cast fellow students, friends and even strangers he found on the street who seemed a perfect fit for the characters he had in mind. For one shot he even used his boss!

Hristo did the makeup for some models himself; he also styled the shoots with leather jackets, fake scars, and other costumes and props. When possible he photographed the models at the Brooks studio, though in some cases he went to the model’s home with a portable studio.

This brings up two of Hristo’s strengths. He says, “Lighting and the ability to direct people are the two things that will distinguish you as a photographer.” To make the composites look believable, he lit the models to match the background plates.

In other words, he analyzed the background light sources, in particular the direction of the lights, and placed his studio lights to simulate the scenes. If there was a light just behind and a little above the subject’s right ear, then Hristo would position a similar light in the studio to mimic the slash lighting that would have been there. He used many lights for each of the studio shots. Obviously, he had to also preconceive the placement of the model in the scene and meticulously direct the model.

The studio shots were done digitally with a Leaf back on a Mamiya 645 AFD camera and Broncolor lights. He used a Canon EOS-1Ds and Profoto 7B lights when he went to the model’s house to shoot.

Post-production was also critical to the final success. The backgrounds and foregrounds had to be color matched. Hristo photographed GretagMacbeth Color Checker charts when he did the background shoots and the studio shoots. He used Photoshop with the scanned backgrounds and he used Adobe Camera Raw with the digital files to match the gray values on the checker chart.

Hristo took painstaking care with the masking of the studio shots. “When the human image is cleaned up and color balanced, I zoom in to 600% and outline it,” he says. “It also has to be shot on a similar-tonality background in order to preserve some of the pixels in areas that can’t be erased.

For example, hair is the hardest to extract. So if the scene is to appear at night I would shoot on grey seamless and leave some of the background around the hair still in the picture and burn them down to match the tonality of the background.

This is a very tedious process. I literally go down to individual pixels and do all of these manipulations.” He says that people have strong opinions about the images: “Whether you like it or hate it, it does something to you. That’s what’s important to me.” He elaborates, saying there are lots of pretty pictures that are nicely lit but don’t have any impact and don’t interest him at all.

The next series he showed me originated with a class project called 25 Strangers. He had to photograph 25 people, unknown to him, in such a way as to tie them together in a series. Hristo chose a tavern called Cold Springs Tavern in Santa Ynez Valley, near Santa Barbara. The place was full of hard-core bikers—perfect for his series.

He set up an Octabank softbox as a main light (he prefers this circular arrangement to rectangular softboxes, as they are more like the sun) and a background light with a Profoto 7B pack outside the bar. Then he chatted up the patrons, asking to photograph them. Many said “no,” but enough said “yes.”

He photographed 40 of them to ensure a strong final selection of 25 images. He used Photoshop to do some dodging and burning on the color channels—he simply paints with a brush on the appropriate color channel. He prefers this technique to more global techniques such as Levels and Curves. He also sepia-toned the images.

Hristo is still fascinated by the music scene and is currently working on a music portfolio, since one of his goals is to work for music magazines. He told me about his recent trip to the famous Roxy Theatre on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

He found out that the Swedish band In Flames (a favorite of his) was playing there, and he showed up early in the morning to try to get access to photograph them. They were wrapped up in rehearsals and sound checks all day, but Hristo waited patiently until late in the day, when he was allowed in and given the opportunity to photograph the band on stage.

Having been a child in Bulgaria while the country was still under the Soviet sphere of influence, and finding himself now studying the subject that he loves and poised to move to the international capitol of photography (New York City), Hristo is enthusiastic about what is ahead for him.

It’s this passion that comes across when speaking with 27-year-old Hristo Shindov. Add to that his first-class technical knowledge and his artistic vision, all of which will no doubt serve him well when he moves to New York to show what he can do.

Hristo Shindov is a name that is hard to say but, perhaps, will prove to be easy to remember. Visit Hristo’s website at www.shindov. com.

Larry Brownstein is the photographer and author of two books, Los Angeles, Where Anything is Possible and The Midnight Mission. His photos appear in numerous books, magazines, calendars, etc. His stock photography is represented by Getty Images. He has a growing wedding photography business. His work can be seen at www.larrybrownstein.com