AOP part 4: Natural Light Serenity

Always look to the lighting on the face first. See here how we have perfect Rembrandt lighting on the face.

If we have that, then the rest of the picture will typically follow. So the shadows are giving us a nice sense of the form of Maja. There is detail in the white material because of the many shadows.

Maja is close to the window, so this is giving us a nice, soft, diffused light.

For me a good shoot is a proper collaboration between the me and the model. I find that works best by feeding the model an emotion and letting them enact that emotion. The best models are great body actors.

Trying to manipulate the pose by direction is a very slow and often unhelpful process. Telling someone to look down is not the same as telling them to look sad.

Sometimes I will just kick out a single word, for example "serenity". Other times I will give the model a little story to work through.

Now within that I am still guiding the posing and structure "lift the head a little", "face to camera", "relax the arms" etc., but that is more to do with tuning the lines in the image and creating a working variety of shots. The guidance is gentle and natural to the models flow posing.

Now, this enables the model to move from pose to pose because they understand the story they are working within the overall emotion you are trying to convey in your image. But at the same time it is you making the image, not just taking it.

This is an excerpt from "Anatomy of a Photoshoot" which gives a complete breakdown of two days shooting with a full in-depth step by step review of everything that I do.

It is available on Amazon

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