Today’s Post by Joe Farace
As Douglas Adams says near the beginning of his book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “This never happens…” and now to paraphrase him…A subject meets a photographer in the studio and tells them “stand over there,” they click the shutter and the resulting pose is perfect.
That’s why I always advise aspiring portrait and glamour photographers to shoot through a pose when working a model, no matter how experienced the subject may be.
Here’s what I mean by “shoot through a pose: A photographer should start to refine a subject’s pose by constantly communicating with them until they and they together arrive at a pose that looks good and, most importantly, where she’s comfortable. Then, and only then, can you start to make a salable photograph.
But don’t stop there. As part of my suggested process, you should keep shooting variations of that what-might-be-final pose all the while adjusting the camera angle and even changing lenses (or focal length with zooms) until you arrive at something you and, hopefully your subject, will like even more! But don’t stop there either. Continue shooting through the pose until you don’t like what you see. Only then you can stop and move onto another setup.
How I made this shot: The above image of my former muse Erin Valakari was one of 20 images that I made in a sequence while she was experimenting with using that scarf in her poses. This pose was frame number 15.
The portrait was made in my 11×15-foot home studio using a Paul C. Buff DigiBee DB800 with Plume Ltd Wafer softbox used as the main light and placed at camera right. An Alien Bee B800 with 16×30-inch Westcott Apollo Strip soft box is at camera left while another Digibee with a 48-inch Dynalite Quad Square black/silver umbrella was located in a back corner of my studio at camera left.
The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (at 45mm) with an exposure of 1/160 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 200. Background was 53″x18′ Savage Celebration Lights Printed Background Paper that was hung on JTL background stands. Image was retouched using Imagenomic’s Portraiture and then tweaked in Exposure Software’s Exposure X4 using one of its Cinema presets.
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My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new copies available from Amazon for $34.95, as I write this. Used copies are starting at the hard-to-beat price price around nine bucks and the Kindle version is $19.99 for those who prefer a digital format.