Photographer: Adam Hayter Model: me
The idea of warming up is very familiar to anyone that does anything physical, especially dance. In my pole dancing class for example students are not allowed in if they miss the 15 minutes warm up which usually consists of various exercises to get the muscles to loosen up a bit. In a dance technique class, whatever the technique, it is all structured very meticulously. As your muscles get warmer you are ready to attempt more complex actions. The concept of warming up is what underlies Bikram yoga, which uses the extreme heat in order to increase flexibility and literally warm the muscles.
But the warm up is not just physical, it is also a way of preparing yourself. So it is no surprise that art students also engage in a warm up when starting on a drawing. As a life model I am most familiar with it. "Let's start with a few two minutes poses" the tutors tell me, and to the class/workshop participants, they say that the idea is to warm up the hand, to begin to see, just drawing lines without paying attention to detail. It's a warm up leading to a long pose.
I have often done some warming up at the start of a photographic modelling session too, just a few shots to see how the photographer and I got on and to get used to the camera. With a digital camera that is quite easy to do, you have all those shots you can take and also delete, if you are not happy with them.
Photographer: me
But what do you do if your medium is film?I dont want to get into the habit of trying everything with a digital camera and then use film when I have decided on composition, lighting etc. After all in pre-digital days people did not do that.
How do you do it then? Mine is a genuine question to which I would welcome some answers.
If working with a new model, I need to get her/him comfortable before I start shooting in earnest. I also need to see what would work best with them, so my instinct would be to look at them carefully. Those who do not have much modelling experience find it unnerving. A shoot takes me a long time because I am not snapping away, at present I can only work with very patient models. I also find that sometimes only two or three shots are all I am after.
I took my camera when we celebrated my mother's 90th birthday. I had it on a tripod in a corner and I used only a few frames, but throughout I kept on thinking about what I wanted and how best to get it. Everyone is so used to people taking hundreds of photos, they thought I was quite eccentric.
A friend suggested I should read the following article by Ron Bigelow on Previsualisation. I found it very helpful. I remember a photographer friend telling me that when he had a studio and took photos, in pre-digital days, he would never have a film in the camera when he began the shoot, unbeknownst to the model. He would then say "Oh we have done the first roll" and proceed to load the film into the camera. This was so that the model would warm up and feel more confident in front of the camera. I am tempted to use the same technique...What do you think?
I shoot digital, so there's really no such thing as the camera not being loaded (unless I really screwed up and there was no memory card). But yeah, that's a good way of kind of doing a test shoot before wasting film. And doing it from behind the camera is a great way to study the model without it looking like she's being inspected or judged like a dog at a show. :)
ReplyDeleteAs for pre-visualisation, yes. I always go into a shoot with at least two or three very specific ideas in mind. Of course, reality always kicks in. The conditions are never quite the way I saw them in my head, so I'll have to improvise. But at least it gives me a good starting point.
Dear Alex
ReplyDeleteUsing an empty film camera for the first ten minutes is a very well-known trick. I first heard it on a workshop with Will Cheung, and he didn't claim to have come up with the idea. Based on what Will said, a large percentage of professionals used this trick, particularly as the photographer usually had to cover the cost of the film as part of the overhead.
"Let me just change the memory card" can be another good one for digital users, which I've used with people who hate being photographed, as a way of reducing their tension. You're unlikely to need to do this with a confident model, but it's a great way to get a tense person to relax a bit, and when you start shooting again you can get some decent shots while they are still relatively relaxed. I've used this with more success than you'd think with people who need portraits for work-related publicity.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using digital to get studio lighting right, particularly on a composition which requires very fine detail, for example where you need focus the light very closely on part of the model's face. Before digital, photographers used polaroids for just that purpose. You could buy polaroid backs for medium and large format cameras; you can still find them second hand, for that matter, but I don't think you can get the film now.
The only real alternative to digital testing of which I'm aware are using hot lights rather than strobes, as the modelling light on a strobe only shows you the general direction of the light.
When you're not using strobes for a very fine effect (eg daylight studio work, outdoor photography), you don't need digital testing. It's just a matter of experience and you'll acquire that soon enough. The hardest thing is to recognise that your eyes see a much wider dynamic range than film, and your brain often compensates for light falling off from a single source, making the shadows seem less dark.