Tag Archive for: model

The power of composition Pt I

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Composition is one of the most powerful tools you have, but also often the one that is hardly used, or the wrong way. Let’s take a quick look today at some very simple things you can do to spice up your shot.

 

When we shoot an image the layout of the camera is (often) fixed to a certain ratio, the most common ratios are 4:3 and 3:2.
Some cameras will allow you to shoot in different formats but they will (of course) do this by cropping in camera, meaning you use less pixels, and to be honest that’s not something I would advise for the simple reason that you can never get something back that was not there from the start, but you can very easily take something away in Photoshop or Lightroom. So my advise is to always shoot in full resolution.

 

Landscape vs portrait
A few months ago a client asked me for a shot in portrait mode to represent my work, much to my surprise I had to look really hard, I do have a lot of portrait mode shots of course but somehow the ones that “represent my work” are all in landscape mode. This actually triggered me to write this blogpost. When I look at my old work I see that I often switched between landscape mode and portrait mode, but the more I progressed the more I started shooting in landscape mode, the reason for this is actually pretty simple.

 

Model vs story vs ……
When you start shooting models the main attention point is often well….. the model, you try to fill the frame with the model as much as possible, you don’t crop the head etc. The more you progress the more you will try to play with this, you will start cropping the top of the head to draw more attention to the eyes etc. Sometimes this can be really tricky to explain to a customer by the way. I always tell them that it is to draw attention to the eyes, and when you show two different shots next to each other it’s often immediately clear…. but in all honesty we don’t need the top of the head, we know it’s there right?

 

The more you progress the more you will start to give attention to the “story” and you will very quickly find out that the surrounding areas are almost as important (sometimes even more important) as your model. Don’t show the area and you end up with a shot that could have been taken anywhere, show the surrounding areas and you end up with something unique. Very quickly you will also find out that shooting landscape mode is much easier in that case. Now as soon as you start doing that with portraits (headshot) you will find that the images become much more engaging.

 

Take for example this portrait from a session with Lenaa.

Lenaa December 20 2014 1607

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See the location

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Often people ask me for great locations, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t love to shoot in a great location, right?
For us it’s important to keep finding new locations for my workshops because I want them to be fresh and new and we have to fit in a group so those “needs” are different from what I would do if I would shoot for myself.

 

In my opinion the best locations are often right in front of you, you just have to learn to see them.
A prime example are the walls in our studio, you don’t want to know how often people have asked me “When are you gonna paint the walls?” I always answer with the same reply “these are intentional… they are used as backdrops” and in 99% of the cases the response is “Cool… I need that too”. In fact, at that point I already gave the student his/hers moneys worth for the workshop because I opened their eyes for the possibilities right in front of them.

 

Photographers travel the world for locations and often forget the beauty that is in their own area, for the simple reason they see it all the time, so todays blogpost is there to motivate you to look around, find locations close by and incorporate them into your shoots. As an example these two shots with Nadine.

 

A few years ago I had my office done, they removed the wallpaper to put in the new and when they did I saw something I wanted to shoot. Now imagine me first asking/urging them to do the work in one day, and than half way through ask them to go and come back 2 days later….. yeah they didn’t get it too :D, the result might have been the trigger to create the custom walls in our studio, long story short I loved the roughness and wanted to shoot it with a theme, I send a few snaps to Nadine and she came up with what you are going to see now.

Nadine 15 Februari 2011 - 12

 

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Posing tip….

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Books have been written about posing, so called posing guides… and although they might work for a base I always believe it’s better to do something really creative when you are working with your models. Often it’s not that there is a 123 solution that always works, every model is different and has different poses that work for him/her so try to approach each shoot with that in mind.

 
For example in this shot with Marie we choose for a pose not every model can pull off, and although it looked liked the posed very relaxed I can tell you that this is literally a split second shot, so time it correctly. but when you get it “right” you can end up with some pretty interesting results.
Marie 1 Maart 2008 workshop-12

For much more in depth information on model photography check out my book “Mastering the model shoot” (now also in Chinese :D) or visit www.frankdoorhof.com for instructional videos and daily updates, or check out my videos on www.kelbyone.com

Tip about locations in the studio with props

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To spice up a shoot you don’t always have to go to a stunning location, sometimes you can bring the location to your studio…. well at least part of the location.
In this case we used an old window as a prop, the model is behind it and the light is falling through the window, I added some waterdrops to make the scene a bit more interesting…..

 

Now the first thing people ask me is “How do you get these props”
The answer is very very simple, just go to your local scrapyard, offer some posters in exchange or pay what they ask, often it’s very cheap because we actually go for the rundown (real scrap) material. You can also of course make a deal that you can bring stuff back and get new props.

 

Lenaa Juni 20 2014 116
One extra tip… DON’T LET THE MAID CLEAN THE WINDOW 🙂