The Process: Turning People Into Nightmares

A nurse. An accountant. A car mechanic. A teacher. Take your pick of jobs, people from every possible working background has visited Horrify Me to become a vision of horror. It’s the same with lifestyle varieties; the goth ones, the weird ones, the quiet ones, the flamboyant ones, the famous ones, and of course the everyday normal folk of everyday life, visit me for their scary portraits. It seems there’s no “type” when it comes to horror fans. If you spend any time in the horror communities online then you might be forgiven for believing that horror fans are all a little freaky, all goths or metal heads, perhaps displaying their obsession like morbid peacocks. But it’s simply not the case. That smartly dressed guy with his briefcase and gold watch that you walk past on the way to work every day, or that lovely soft-spoken lady who delivers your Amazon orders, could be as much a wild horror fan as the most outrageous gore-punks you encounter online. Horror is a genre with a wide fan base.

When I started Horrify Me way back in 2014, I did expect to meet horror fans and I did have an expectation that I’d meet a lot of the dark gothic types, the metal punk weirdos, and the heavily tattooed gorehounds who live and breath horror 24/7. And I did meet all of them, and still do, and I love them. To some extent, I am one of those people myself, albeit inwardly rather than outwardly. I love being in the company of the hardcore horror freaks because we can talk horror movies endlessly all day, even delving into the more obscure and relentless films that the mainstream has forgotten, and we share our passion in a meaningful way.

What surprised me initially was the amount of “normal” folk I meet. Yeah I know, “normal” is highly subjective, but I mean the everyday folk that don’t stand out in a crowd, the average working family people who you would never guess would want to get drenched in blood and explore their inner demons. Their passion and interest in horror can be every bit as wild as the outwardly obsessed horror nuts.

Most of the people who visit me at Horrify Me have one thing in common: The vast majority of them have never worn high quality horror makeup before. Some have bought a little makeup kit for Halloween and had a go at something for their seasonal frights, but most of them experience their first proper horror look at Horrify Me. What’s more, a large section of them have never posed in front of a camera, let alone embarked on a high concept creative photo shoot. So, how do I turn normal everyday people into living nightmares?

The first part of answering this is obvious: Apply makeup! This is of course a fun process. We chat a lot, mostly about horror movies, and mostly lamenting the generally poor quality of many modern horror films compared to the supreme offerings the genre gave us from the 1980s golden age. People enjoy their transformations. Some take selfies during the process to record the changes, and others prefer not to see it until it’s completely finished. Once the makeups are all done, they spend a few minutes getting used to seeing themselves as zombies or demons, pulling faces in the mirror, taking selfies, even practicing their snarls and growls. This part of the process is actually fascinating. After I have applied a physical transformation to a client, their internal transformation tends to happen quite naturally and without instruction. They just seem to awaken a natural instinct, without any prompting, and allow their personality to be affected by their new appearance. It’s obvious that having a scary appearance seems to give people permission to behave in a more unusual way. This is of course all harmless and enjoyable, and is really just tapping into their theatrical impulses rather than any sort of dangerous or dark nature. But it’s true to say that the makeup does far more work than mere appearance when it comes to turning people into nightmares.

The next part of the process is lighting. I consider effective lighting to be every bit as important as effective makeup. You can read a lot of details about how I light my subjects here. I learned from the old horror masters back in the 1980s, reading Fangoria magazine and watching as many interviews as I could get my hands on in the pre-internet age, that lighting a horror subject properly is what can amplify it’s fear factor. With carefully placed lighting you can make any average human face appear scary or threatening, so shaping the lighting to enhance horror makeup has a huge impact on the image. It’s important to create atmosphere, to suggest darkness, to create contrast. In portrait photography there are a number of established lighting techniques, such as the butterfly light (this is a classic technique with the light raised to create a soft shadow under the nose), the Rembrandt (this is a dramatic and vintage technique which casts a shadow from the nose to generate a triangle of light on the cheek), and split lighting (a simple technique that casts light onto one side of the face more than the other), among others. I do of course apply many of the established methods, but because I shoot in a low light environment I can sculpt and form dark areas and shadowy contrasts to create dark and moody photography. I sometimes also under-light faces. When you were a kid, if you ever held a flashlight under your chin so that the light pointed up your face, you know how creepy it made you look. This looks extremely unnatural to the eye because in nature there are very few instances where our faces are under-lit and so the forms and shadows that this generates can appear unsettling.

The final component to turning people into nightmares is, of course, art direction for the shoot itself. This is just a case of giving people their instructions on how to pose, where to look, what mood to show, that sort of thing. But it’s not always that simple. Not everyone is naturally theatrical or flamboyant, some are actually pretty shy and introvert, yet they still want their portraits. Part of a photographer’s key skill is getting a convincing shoot from their client no matter how shy they may be. This requires a bit of psychology and patience. I find it useful to help the most shy individuals by reassuring them, helping lift their confidence, and showing them a few back-of-the-camera shots so that they can actually see how awesome they look. Sometimes it’s necessary to do a few warm up shots, to let people find their character, or to invent a weird little backstory for their character to help project ideas into their minds. Whatever it takes to get authentic shots, I’ll do. Unusual portrait photography can sometimes require some unusual directing methods. Of course, there are many clients who are super keen to delve into their dark theatricality and are already glowing with confidence, and with these individuals I literally just give pose instructions. Either way, I am always ready for whatever challenges people face me with and I always get the shots.

I said that the directing of models for the actual shoot was the final component of this process but actually that’s not always true. There is the photo editing stage which puts the final touches onto the photo. Contrary to what many people believe, I actually try to photograph my portraits as close to finished as possible, so that editing is minimal. Working in a low-light studio often means I need to tweak the sliders just a little to brighten a few parts up, and during the later parts of the shoot the prosthetics might come a bit loose meaning a join is visible so this gets repaired in editing, but these are light-touch edits that don’t fundamentally amend the nature of the image. A common alteration I do make in editing is with eyes, which I usually darken or lighten as appropriate to make them a bit more creepy. There are certain images that require big digital edits to create a special effect, such as fake flames in a devil portrait, but on the whole my photos are not heavily edited.

And that’s more or less how I Horrify people. All sorts of people, all different, all with their own perspectives on life, from their own unique backgrounds, with their own individual beliefs, quirks and personalities. Meeting so many people is part of why I love my work, and getting the opportunity to transform so many people into horrific nightmares is without a doubt one of the most awesome jobs it’s possible to have.