Mary Li and I teamed up with my model friend, Fidesse Fehr, who flew down from the Gold Coast. We shot together a while back in 2012 and I was very impressed with her enthusiasm, as well as her natural ability to pose and work with the camera. This time was no different - To say I was happy with the results would be an understatement...

The title for the image comes from one of my all time favorite songs "Welcome to the machine" by Pink Floyd. While the "machine" in the song is meant to represent the music industry; to me, the "machine" is our culture and society - a machine that is, for better or worse, force fed to us via the media and by extension, the television set.

I searched high and low for just the right type of old TV and finally found one at the local dump (along with a couple of milk crates).

The light from the TV itself was never going to be bright enough, so I had to create my own by ripping out the innards and placing an AB800 strobe inside. I then lined the inside with white cardboard, and placed a white diffusion sheet and cooling filter on the front. The cooling filter was used becasue light from a TV is generally on the cooler side.

I used 4 lights in total; a warm soft box off to the right, a cool light off to the left to highlight the back of the TV, a very dim white fill light bouncing off the roof, and of course, the light from the TV.