Musings Part 3
September/22/2011 04:39 PM
When I opened my first studio, one day I was with a client reviewing what I had chosen as the best pictures, she loved them but begged me to let her see the others. I complied and to my surprise she chose many more images and favored some of the others over what I had chosen.
This taught me two things.
The client or model must be allowed to review all images and that the best images are the ones in which they are a collaboration between me and the person in the photo. When in the collaboration mode, the input comes from both, it is almost like playtime and we are free to be ourselves. The model is no longer a model but a living human, not a prop when approached this way.
It does make some people uncomfortable since they are used to being told what to do, but I always encourage input from whoever I am making photographs with.
Everyone comes to the studio with images in their head and those are the only ones I care about brining to life, unless there are also ones in my head as well!
More often than not it is during the final minutes of the session that the client comes out with their ideas, that is when true creativity comes alive in the studio!
I have a passion for people and value their imagination as much as my own.
I don't take pictures, with this type of process that is impossible, instead I make pictures and know full well that who and what is in the image is just as if not more important than I am in the original making.
It is when I am refining the image in the computer that my "style" comes out.
To me if there is no darkroom work done to an image afterwards, it is but a photo that anyone could have taken, it is the finishing touches that count the most and you have to know when to stop and for me I have found that the best time to stop is when I know that there is just a bit more that can be done....
I took a trip to his website to find most of the work had been finished with plug in photoshop filters. I have nothing against the filters as a starting point but you have to make them your own. They should compliment and enhance, not take away, not distract. Photoshop and the like can make a good image great but it can never make a bad image good.
To my horror some of these images also had crooked ocean horizons! This can be fine and look really great in some, well only a few situations, otherwise it looks like the ocean is being poured out the corner of the picture! (like the shot of bonita beach over there)
And knowing what I know about balance and the human body the some poses would have much more impact if the image was straightened.
And I am not sure what it is, maybe composition is part of it along with getting rid of unneeded crap and keeping the use of filters to only where they are needed to let the feeling show. to a minimum, but when i see some people's work, and they leave me cold, I no longer think much of the skill of such a photog! (I like that word "photog" about as much as I like the word "dude" and that is not very much)
In the end, Art is a purely subjective thing. Either you like it or you don't, but before you decide if an image is any good, really take a look at it, let your own view, your own opinion shine through.
As for my work, I know some of it is crap, I know that I could be less demanding on myself as far as my clients work goes, as some are so used to today's photography, where it is a rare thing to come across really great work and they wouldn't have a clue that I wasn't giving them my best.
I will never compromise and always strive to make the next image the best I have ever created.
PS This post was inspired by a conversation with a friend named Julie.