Before the sun ever woke up on Saturday morning, our shoot began. Two models decided to take a chance on us and come, one even driving from Athens, and I wasn’t about to waste their time.
I’d already left defeated in a battle vs. lighting on Wednesday night, and was driven not to lose again. Instead of scheduling a sunset shoot, I decided that it may be more helpful to have natural light on my side (in addition to my equipment). However, if it was raining, overcast, etc., I still needed to produce great, quality, well-composed, well-lit pictures. Period.
With that expectation clearly preceding this session, magic didn’t happen. Instead, well thought out picture making did.
And sometimes didn’t. The picture above, I’ll let you figure out why I should have removed the light behind Elizabeth. And this picture, follows the Rule-of-Thirds, has good lighting, and one problem that I want to call your attention to.
Maybe you noticed it, and thought this was intentional, cool, or didn’t care. Whether you liked the picture or not, all the lines in it point to something other than our model, Elizabeth – the creek.
Because of my composition, this photo’s focal point is no longer the model, it’s the creek. And however scenic, beautiful, and peaceful it is, it’s not what I really want you to pay attention to. What I want is for my composition to compliment my main subject, Elizabeth and all the things around her to as well. (The reason I had to tell you who my main subject was is evidence that I didn’t do a good job of demonstrating that in this picture).
Mark was the one who had originally called me out on this not-so-noticeable faux pas of mine when he helped during the session with Earl and Mihia, and ever since, I’ve been much more considerate of lines and focal points of my photograph’s composition. Well, most of the time.
As a result, in many of my photographs the main subject and what I want you to be looking at is located in the center. The reason that’s not boring is because I didn’t shoot the models at eye-level and the fact that it’s more enjoyable to look at because your eyes know what they should be looking at.
Now, hopefully, I didn’t need to tell you what to look at in those pictures because the main subject was evident. Here’s how I like to think of a shot.
I like to think of lots of arrows, all pointing to something, and if they’re not pointing to the main subject I want, I change something. My composition. My position. My angle. How the model is posed. I think about the emotion I want to evoke, and the look I want the model to have, and I try to release that perspective by giving them a piece of my vision behorehand.
See what I mean? Before I took this picture, I wanted you to be captivated by her eyes more than anything else and asked Mallory to angle her body in such a way that made you know that without even realizing it.
After model swapping with Debra (again, so fabulous of her to come and be a proactive photographer!), we reconjoined to take some pictures of Elizabeth and Mallory together.
Here’s a short video to sum up how we worked together (with Mike’s help and videography skills) to make n0t-so-magical pictures and think through our pictures before you or our laptops got to see them.
And here’s what was produced.