Anti-instruction: how not to behave at a photo shoot | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Insta­gram is already full of threads of jokes about the opin­ion of the inhab­i­tants about the work of pho­tog­ra­phers. For many, it is still “Yes, but what is there to do? You just press a but­ton!” or “Will you send in a cou­ple of days? This is not a direct job, just cre­ativ­i­ty, you can process the shoot­ing in one night.

Depre­ci­a­tion blooms. But okay — such com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be reduced to a joke, and explained to a per­son. Anoth­er thing is uncom­fort­able actions dur­ing shoot­ing. They direct­ly influ­ence the result. It is about them that we will talk. I tell you what not to do and explain why.

Pho­to: gabrielcarasso.com

Case 1: asking to see pictures during the shoot

I have encoun­tered this more than once, but almost always I man­aged to main­tain a bal­ance and cor­rect­ly explain to the per­son why I would not show pic­tures from the cam­era screen.

First­ly, these are raw, unprocessed pho­tos, and even with a selec­tion on the go. A per­son will see a gray pho­to, which they may not like and kill the mood of the shoot­ing.

Sec­ond­ly, it is not a fact that after pro­cess­ing, exact­ly the pho­to that the client saw will fall into the final selec­tion. Per­haps the per­son does not like the way he looks in the pic­ture. Again, every­thing depends on the mood, which is bet­ter to sup­port in every pos­si­ble way. There­fore, it’s def­i­nite­ly not worth doing this, but you can calm­ly explain the posi­tion to a per­son.

There are also reverse cas­es, when even a raw pho­to­graph can be use­ful and this can be a tech­nique to fuel the mood. It hap­pened to me once: a por­trait shot, a very closed girl, stiff­ness in front of the cam­era … I have already turned on all the tricks to make her more com­fort­able. Includ­ing, in the moment, only with the pho­to in which I am absolute­ly sure — I allowed myself to show her how it turns out. The mood instant­ly improved, and she opened up in front of the cam­era.

Pho­to: nuderetouching.com

Case two: invite a partner with you

The case is fun­da­men­tal­ly stu­pid and com­plete­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble to me. For­tu­nate­ly, I heard about this only from the words of oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers. At the moment of agree­ing and dis­cussing the future shoot­ing, the per­son sud­den­ly announced that his part­ner also wants to be present. Cas­es were both about men and about girls.

Any per­son on the set will be the third wheel. Por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy is always a one-to-one work. Are you famil­iar with the expres­sion “over the soul”? Here, it’s just about that.

The solu­tion is sim­ple — to explain how uncom­fort­able it will be for every­one and how this will affect the process. Regard­less of which of the two peo­ple insists on this. In extreme cas­es, you can show your port­fo­lio or work reviews, per­haps this will affect the lev­el of trust of a third par­ty.

Pho­to: photocontestinsider.com

Case three: look at the camera on a permanent basis

This hap­pened on one of my recent shoots and made the process very dif­fi­cult. A per­son can look direct­ly into the lens and that’s good, but I would like to sep­a­rate “look into the lens when shoot­ing por­traits” and “peri­od­i­cal­ly look back at the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, turn around, and throw a look,” well, how is it there? Espe­cial­ly if at the moment you are shoot­ing a long shot, ask­ing not to look at the cam­era.

Solv­ing such a seem­ing­ly insignif­i­cant prob­lem is much hard­er than it seems. After all, most like­ly, it is deeply root­ed, and per­se­ver­ance can again kill the mood. The way out can be a soft wish-rec­om­men­da­tion, how best from the out­side. If this does not work, then you need to let the per­son lead his emo­tion­al pat­tern, but shoot this move­ment / pose a lit­tle longer or sev­er­al times in order to catch him in the moment with­out look­ing at the cam­era. Every­one will be com­fort­able.

Pho­to: wonderfulmachine.com

Case four: talk a lot during the shooting itself

Con­ver­sa­tions are an impor­tant part of the process. This includes coor­di­na­tion, and dat­ing before, and small sense in the process, and feed­back after. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion allows you to be a lit­tle more relaxed, increas­es the degree of com­fort and trust in the pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Only not the per­ma­nent move­ment of the lips dur­ing the tar­get­ed shoot­ing, when every­one is tuned in, and the trig­ger is cocked. Most often this hap­pens when shoot­ing in pairs, when both peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er. Imag­ine that you out­lined the scene for peo­ple, found the angle, stepped back, tuned in and see that the peo­ple being pho­tographed are doing every­thing right, only at the same time they are talk­ing.

The deci­sion should be sit­u­a­tion­al: if this is a com­fort­able shoot­ing and you feel a con­nec­tion with peo­ple, then it is bet­ter to gen­tly ask not to do this. A cou­ple of times if nec­es­sary. How­ev­er, this case was not acci­den­tal­ly includ­ed in the list: I also encoun­tered a cat­e­gor­i­cal con­tin­u­a­tion of this. The way out is to seize the moment if the request did not work. Shoot a lit­tle longer, but def­i­nite­ly catch the nec­es­sary emo­tion with a nat­ur­al facial expres­sion. You can also ask to slight­ly change the posi­tion, move, turn the mod­els: this will inter­rupt the con­ver­sa­tion, the atten­tion will return to the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and the facial expres­sions of peo­ple will again be motion­less.

Pho­to: shutterstock.com

Case Five: Teaching a Photographer to Shoot

The last one on this list, but the most cat­e­gor­i­cal. It will not be com­fort­able for every­one at once. In no case should you say which angle is bet­ter to take, how to shoot, what to do. Only if it’s not a mild sit­u­a­tion­al wish that came to mind. In all oth­er cas­es, the shoot­ing is dis­cussed in advance, on the shore. Angles, mood­board, style: all this is dis­cussed only before, it is always good to hear spe­cif­ic wish­es from the client.

How to deal with this on the part of the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, if teach­ing on shoot­ing starts you? It seems that dia­logue is the only cor­rect solu­tion. A soft and polite request with an expla­na­tion of why you should not do this.

Dia­logue will be the right solu­tion in any of these cas­es. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is always the right way.