Most of his time, Karunchai Treetrong (@blowithand) is at the operating table, saving lives and helping those who require his medical attention. But outside working hours, Karunchai uses his Alpha 7 IV camera to shoot breath-taking urban photos in his home city of Bangkok and around the world. For him, photography is about storytelling and his Creative Portrait project conveys a mysterious and supernatural vibe. Titled "Mysterious In The Dark", this is Karunchai's first foray into portrait photography. 

Describing his project, Karunchai explains, "Venturing into portrait photography is both a challenge and an opportunity for me. It allows me to play with the colours and lighting to give different perspectives that create a sense of awe and spark curiosity." The Alpha 7 IV was Karunchai's go-to for creating his visually mystifying shots. 

Planning The Scenes 

Location was one of the most important aspects of telling his story. "I picked a small hostel near Chinatown in Bangkok, Thailand as my only shooting location. The hostel was renovated from the old building and retains its old-fashioned features, allowing me to make use of anachronism as a device to convey the story of these images. Although the room which was used as the main location for shooting is quite small, there’s a double space area that I can go to angle my shots from above. Another advantage of this place is that I can easily control the light in the room by avoiding other kinds of light sources from the outside." 

Props were also used to tell the story and make the collection of photos more eye-catching. Because this was his first foray into portrait photography, planning was a steep learning curve. While generally favouring a more impromptu modus operandi, for this shoot, Karunchai had to plan what he needed for each scene to convey the intended message. "I prepared a lot of props for this project, but I didn’t really have a go-to list that I always use to shoot. I initially thought about the story I would like to tell. Then, I started to list down the things that I needed to buy just for this project, such as flowers, mirror, glass, a smoke generator, a projector and different light sources." 

Throughout the project, the interplay between colours and a dark background were an important element in bringing his subjects to life. "First, I listed all the shots that I want, drafted them accordingly and then decided which colour I would like to use in each shot. My goal is to balance all the major colours that I would like to use - red, blue, green and orange. I love how when used with a dark background, all these colours injected a distinct and atypical quality to each photo. This was even more stark when paired with different poses of the models, supernatural light and a smoky environment." 

Balancing light over darkness 

As a member of the 4X5 Commune which unites photographers from all over Thailand, Karunchai's photos had dark colour tones which made his subjects stood out among the rest. "I love it when there’s the bright subject in the dark, or sometimes the dark subject in the bright background, which creates a lot of contrast and makes the story in the scene more noticeable."

"Back when I started my photography journey, I didn’t really care much about it. I gradually learned how good lighting can affect my storytelling and make my photography stand out from the crowd and not easily imitated. Lighting is such an important part of this, and sometimes I prefer to halt the shooting and wait for more desirable conditions. I will even come back to that same location later if necessary. I also never leave home without an auxiliary, small light source in my backpack just in case something unexpected happens."

With the Alpha 7 IV, he was able to gain control of his settings to take clear and dark shots. "It’s always challenging to shoot in the dark because I need to increase the ISO setting to match my shutter speed in order to catch the moment. The Alpha 7 IV has helped me with that in the past 5 years. The technological advancement of the Full-Frame sensor gives me a lot of flexibility in terms of how I can control the setting of each scene."