Lessons learned... and rocked!

Super jazzed about last weekend's boudoir shoot with the lovely Miss Annie out east, and the rest of the weekend cruising the Palouse looking for ghost towns and abandoned buildings. I've been busily editing photos, and reflecting on the whole experience, and as I mentioned in my last post, trying to focus on the things I did right rather than dwell on what could have gone better. Learn from newbie mistakes and move on to better things! That's today's take-away.

Before I get to a sampling of my favorite shots from the session, I'll tease you a little longer by discussing the things I learned, in a more-or-less chronological order.

1) Google Maps will get you reasonably close to your destination, but you should never implicitly trust it to find you the quickest or most direct route... several times, I followed "Go south on I-195 for four miles, turn right on side road X. After six miles, turn left on road Y, 3.7 miles. Slight right, becomes road z, 10 miles and merge onto I-195 south." Wait a minute.... didn't... wait.. what?

1.5) By the way, very, very, rarely, Google Maps will try to kill you. If it's springtime, and Google Maps insists you take an unimproved county road right after a rainfall, JUST. SAY. NO. Especially if you're driving a 2000 Saturn SC3 coupe. You will not make it to your next stop on time. Just saying.

2) When you choose to do something a little sketchy, say like advertise on Craigslist asking for boudoir photo volunteers and offering no session fee and five free prints in exchange for their time, you'll probably get weirdos (there are a lot of them out there) and more likely no responses at all. If you happen to post your ad on April 1, you'll get even fewer responses as you might like. Didn't even think of that until Annie pointed it out to me and said she almost didn't respond to my ad. Oops.

3) During any sort of model shoot, your model is obviously the prime focus of any shot, but the background is also important; if there's a lot of other stuff in the background, it can distract a viewer from the star of the show. So if you're using backdrops to cover up the background, make sure the backdrops actually extend out to fill the frame. Took a lot of shots where you can see the stands holding up the backdrop, or it only covered one side of the frame because of the angle I was shooting from (the shoot was in her home, so I was constrained by the size and geometry of the rooms we were in). Yes, with some effort, you can Photoshop out distracting elements, but if you don't HAVE to, it can save you hours of work (and if you don't like having to paint in a background at the pixel level, getting it to show through between individual hairs is a nightmare, especially if you don't do photo retouching regularly)

4) It's best to work with makeup artists and stylists that you already know, rather than calling one up out of the blue. Asking a complete stranger to show up at a client's house (which, being a  split-level rental just off of the U. of Idaho campus, was two potted plants and a working doorbell away from being eligible for my abandoned houses shoot the next day) seems kind of sketchy. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Heather from Southern Glow Company for her bravery and for an awesome job on Annie's makeup, and I hope the next time we work together, it'll be less creepy *grin*

5) Be flexible! Turns out some of my favorite shots resulted from a moment of panic when I ran out of ideas and then grabbed a prop off the mantlepiece or shelf and threw it into the mix. When your model isn't just standing there posing but is instead interacting with something, it makes the shoot much more interesting -- action is always more interesting to watch, so get your model moving! It may seem silly at the time, but the act of moving about takes the model's focus off of you and onto what she's doing, and makes the shot more kinetic -- if she's jumping into the air, for instance, her hair will increase in volume due to the momentary release from gravity's effect. Even just having your model toss a pillow into the air and catch it can make for visually interesting moments.

Okay, fine, you want to see pictures. I'm not done editing the ghost town photos yet, so I'll post those in another blog, but you wanted to see the boudoir shots anyway, right?

 

 

 

Once again, thanks to Annie B. for stepping up and giving me a chance to refine my art! I had a blast, and from all accounts, she did too! (Just got a nice email saying if I come out to Eastern Washington again, she'd like to do another shoot with me.. and maybe pay me this time! Doesn't get better than that!)