The Stencil: Think Tank

This Banksy stencil was one of the pieces from the album artwork that was commissioned by the British band ‘Blur’ and created in 2003. There appear to be two variations of this particular stencil, one full length and one showing only the ‘above table’ view of the diners which is the version my image is based on.

The Location:

I had originally hoped to shoot this image inside an Italian restaurant in Hamilton that I thought would work well, but a condition of using the mask was that we had to shoot inside a diving shop so I just had to make do with that.

Wardrobe/Props etc:

Finding the antique divers mask was actually a lot more difficult than I had originally anticipated, but fortunately I was able to find one mask that was on loan to a scuba diving store in Hamilton. The mask we used is an authentic World War II divers mask, and I have been told it is worth somewhere in the region of $20,000 NZD so I wasn’t allowed to take it off site to shoot anywhere else.

The Shoot:

This was the first photoshoot of the whole project, so I was pretty nervous about how well it was all going to come together. The mask was very, very heavy, so someone had to hold most of the weight of the mask from the back of it while the front and sides rested on the model’s shoulders. They were also a bit hungover from the night before and suffered from frequent bouts of claustrophobia while wearing the mask and trying to hold their positions. Fortunately, they both did a great job, considering the circumstances.

Since there was only one mask, I had to do a bit of photoshopping, so the final image is a composite of about 4 or 5 images in total. I used a black collapsible background, and lit them both with the b1600 and the octabox (see the gear page for more info).