What Happened to All the Toilet Paper?
This who-done-it explains step-by-step how these rolls got out of my studio. Hang on, this story is full of twists and turns.
It was a bright morning last spring; the news was full of terrifying reports of toilet paper running low on store shelves. God, I thought, that’s all we need, but I had another problem on my mind—how best to shoot a red balloon.
I know that sounds strange, this is a reoccurring assignment that my friend and mentor Don Giannatti gives in his Project 52 group, which I had been a member of for years. This assignment is meant to be simple, yet a way to stretch your creativity. I hadn’t yet decided what to do and it was due the following day.
I can be guilty of procrastination, but deadlines have always helped motivate me to get the shot completed and I knew it was time to get busy. As I pondered the assignment, the toilet paper news which was all over the media made me wonder if I could marry current events with the red balloon. The pandemic was starting to scare the nation, and I was sure that was the reason behind the run-on store shelves.
It made me wonder who would become the next millionaire by creating a toilet paper home delivery network, that’s about the time I had an idea. What about a red balloon delivery system? I could imagine helium-filled balloons floating along with a roll of toilet paper—that was it! I knew how to move forward.
Planning the shot
Luckily, I still had toilet paper, but I needed to get some red balloons, so it was off to the dollar store. I think there was one size option for red balloons that day. I should have gone to Party City first, and I might have ended up buying 3 or 4 helium-filled balloons, but I didn’t and had gotten home with one package of medium-sized balloons.
How do you make a non-Helium balloon float? Easy, hang it upside down by string and rotate the final shot. I set up a light stand with a boom arm and placed a roll of toilet paper on the arm. I tied a string on one end to the roll and tied the other end to an inflated balloon. The balloon hung straight down under its weight and pulled the string taught. I needed to shoot against my thunder grey seamless background to keep the string visible. The first couple of frames identified an obvious issue—I had set my strobes up like I might for any shot. The balloon was hanging upside down and I was lighting the bottom of the balloon. If I wanted to “sell” this shot, I needed to lower my lights to the floor and light upward so the balloon might look like the sun was hitting it from above. Next, I placed a strobe lighting the background behind the balloon so I could see the edge when I cut it out in post and to give the balloon some translucency.
I added a couple of strip boxes as I worked on lighting the toilet paper roll. This would help shape the roll by adding a brighter side and a shadow side. To imitate the sun on the balloon, I put a sock on a 22-inch beauty dish and added a scrim to defuse it even further, so it was not just a hard round specular on the balloon.
I twisted the roll a few times as I shot because it would look fake to copy and paste the balloon with the same roll position into my final image.
Postproduction
I hunted through some of my stock for a tree-lined road and found the perfect image with enough dark trees to allow the string to show, and a fun curve to the road coming toward the viewer.
I chose two balloon frames that twisted the position of the toilet paper and with the quick selection tool was easily able to select the balloon and the toilet paper roll and wondered if I could select the string. It worked pretty well, better than I expected but still needed some help. I used the pencil tool and played with a few different pixel widths before deciding on 2 pixels to draw in the string in the spaces I couldn’t select.
Turning the image
It is fascinating to me how your brain changes your perspective. Look at this image of the balloon hanging upside-down, it’s weird and uncomfortable. I might venture to guess you have never seen a balloon hanging upside down from a roll of toilet paper in a photograph before, and no matter how long you look at it, it never seems right. But turn the image upside down and add a solid background and we accept it absolutely as a balloon floating along.
Dropping that balloon onto my background really helps convince your brain that the shot is real. The assignment was “shoot a red balloon” but I expanded the parameters. I felt like this image needed more— one balloon floating down the road just wasn’t very exciting.
After adding a few more balloons, adjusting their scale, and adding some subtle shadows I created the image I had in my head.
My final image, shot mostly in the studio, and manipulated in photoshop leaves the viewer wondering “how hard was it to catch all those balloons floating down the road?” That is the goal, to be proficient enough with my lighting and photoshop skills to make a believable image.
This article was not intended to walk you through every technical detail with camera settings or strobe powers, but instead to show you my thought process and how I solve problems in order to achieve the end result. I hope you found the process interesting.
