Don’t try this at home,….. well actually do

Sometimes the best thing you can do is think…..
Sometimes the best thing you can do is not think…..
Well in short, every situation is different.

We as photographers are story tellers, we only have one limitation and that’s that we have to tell the story with one image, or a series of stills. This seems very limiting, however in my opinion it isn’t. As you might know I also do some video next to my photography, and don’t get me wrong I LOVE video, but I think Photography for ME is a stronger story telling medium. Or maybe I’m just lazy 🙂

During the workshop last week with Carmen we ended up on a road close to our studio and we did a so called “bare shoot” there, meaning no extra styling, no lights, no nothing…. try to tell the story with just that… nothing. This might sound easy, but trust me it isn’t…. however when you master the technique it’s something that you can really benefit from A LOT.

In these cases I always let the student shoot first, and in 99% of the cases they will go low on the ground and make some nice natural light images, well that’s ok. When I shoot I will start with the model in the middle of the road (like they do) and point out that although it’s a nice image, it can be much stronger if you just pose the model on the lines on the road, like this:
Let the model pose a bit compact and crop real tight, and it’s ok…. however when you start working the story it can be so much stronger.

Leaving stuff out
One of the most important things when shooting on location is to know what to show and what not. In many many cases I see images shot on beautiful locations, but the only reason I know this is because the photographer told me so, in other words they show too little of the area and the shot is transformed to something that could have been shot anywhere, sometimes even a studio. So in most of the cases I would say…. “show more”.

In this case however I wanted to leave something out. During our stay on the road there was some traffic, and when I saw a huge truck coming from behind I told Carmen to just stand still, don’t move and I positioned myself on the ground, I waited for the truck to pass her by and managed to get this shot, it’s a portrait shot with the truck in the back, I edited it with NIK SilverFX and the final result is something I really like. Normally I would have stayed a lot longer and would play with the movement of the model and a truck but time was limited that day plus there were not a lot of trucks and I of course would rather spend my time teaching with a student than let him wait for a truck which might or might not come (we never know here).

this is an older shot from the same road by the way which I really like, it’s like 8 years old when Marie just started out modeling for me.

So the next time you’re in a location, make sure to think about the fact if you just want a cool fashion shot or if you want to tell a story, or combine the two 😀

Good luck.