Let Me Out of Here!

What happens when fear turns into panic and no one is coming to help?

Model: Jessbuckl on Instagram

This was one of those shoots where things started off very soft and aesthetic… and then I deliberately took it somewhere less comfortable. Tank Space is perfect for that because it gives you this controlled environment where everything can look quite ethereal if you let it. But I did not want ethereal for this one. I wanted something that made you hesitate when you looked at it.

Jess was brilliant. When I asked for something darker, she did not even question it. She actually screamed underwater for this, which is not exactly the easiest thing to do. You can usually spot when something like that is faked, and this very much is not. There is a rawness to it that you just do not get unless someone fully commits to the moment.

Originally, this was just a tank shot. The lighting was already working in my favour with the blue tones coming in from the sides, and the fabric added that sense of movement and distortion that sells the underwater environment. The floaty material is doing more work than it probably gets credit for. Without it, the image would feel much flatter and far less immersive.

Even so, it still leaned too far into “pretty” for me. The scream alone was not enough to tip it fully into discomfort. So I pushed it further in post and embedded the tank into a stone structure. That was the turning point. It stopped being a controlled studio environment and started to feel like something else entirely.

What I find interesting is how people read it differently. I imagined it as a tank built into a rock face, something deliberate, something almost experimental. Someone else saw it as a well, which I had not consciously considered but makes complete sense. I am quite happy leaving that open because it adds another layer. You are not just looking at an image, you are trying to interpret what is happening.

From a technical standpoint, shooting through glass and water is always a challenge. You are dealing with refraction, loss of sharpness, and a subject that is constantly moving. Getting a clean, sharp frame while capturing something as dynamic as a scream is not straightforward. It is one of those setups where you take a lot more frames than usual and hope one lines up perfectly.

I leaned heavily into the blue tones in post. They were already present from the lighting, so it made sense to push them rather than fight them. It helps unify the scene and gives it that cold, almost clinical feel, which contrasts quite nicely with the chaos of the subject.

If I am picking at it, I do think the front of the tank could have been pushed further to feel more curved. It reads slightly flatter than I would ideally like. But at some point you stop tweaking and accept the image for what it is. There is a danger in overworking something like this and losing the immediacy of it.

What I do like is the tension. There is a disconnect between how visually striking it is and what is actually happening in the frame. It pulls you in, and then it holds you there because something is not quite right. That was always the goal with this one.

Also, Tank Space has now firmly planted itself as a problem in the best way possible… I left with far more ideas than I arrived with, which means I will absolutely be back.

Inspiration
I wanted to take something that is usually presented as calm and visually pleasing and push it into something more uncomfortable, where the viewer feels tension rather than ease.

Summary
A dark underwater portrait exploring confinement, tension, and discomfort through controlled lighting and compositing.

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