I want to get a more human touch into my images. I love photographing people and a lot of the ideas I have for my surreal personal projects involve a person or people in the image. A hurdle, that I have wanted to cross, is working with professional models. I get a little anxious as I want to approach the situation with confidence and a clear vision of what I want to achieve, without wasting anyone's time. Getting over this barrier, will open up a lot of opportunities to do more interesting projects. My first experience of working with a model was with Sophie Hennessy (featured above). We did a group shoot on the beach with some other local photographers. Everyone was cross guiding/posing Sophie which didn't put her at ease and we tended to get in each other's way. It was a good experience but I didn't learn all that I had hoped. You can see some of the images I took here.
This weekend will be my second attempt. Dan and I are heading up to Liskeard on Sunday to join a group of 6 other photographers and 7 beautiful models at a great venue. Dan and I are sharing a slot as the event sold out in 4 hours and we got in on the reserve list, but this time we are doing things differently. Dan and I have a different shooting style Dan will be perfecting his style and I want to try to get some more concept, surreal fashion, type shots. Inspired mainly by Tim Walker, Guy Bourdin and Miss Aniela (incidentally, I am doing a workshop with Miss Aniela in London next month - more on that in a future post). We have decided to split our one hour time slot with each model into 30 minutes each. This will allow us to get the shots we want, albeit in limited time, and while one of us shoots, the other will assist.
It is pretty much all natural light so we will bring reflectors and flashes but I think we will mainly work with the available lighting. Posing is something that I have little experience of, but having watched Sue Bryce's excellent Creative Live last weekend, I think I have a good grasp of some basic techniques to help me. Other than a few interesting props we should be good to go.
What are other's experiences of working with models for the first time? I would love to hear your stories and tips.
You can checkout my images of Sophie at Crantock here You can checkout Dan Ward's work here, oh and be sure to join his Facebook page if you like his work and would like to receive large amounts of love and gratitude from Dan.