A couple weeks ago Courtney Starr asked if she could use some of my images for a little documentary she was putting together for her college English class titled “Nudity in Photography.” She admits to wishing she knew how to use the technical equipment better, but the content is great! I love what Linda Palma has to say, she sums up my thoughts almost exactly.
I hope you enjoy it.
You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again, photography ‘know it alls’ telling you your photo would be great, if it wasn’t overexposed.
Well… congratulations Ansel Adams the Third, it is overexposed.
Have you ever sat in the ocean, waiting for that next great wave with the blazing sun glimmering atop the cresting foam, shooting pincers of blinding light into your eyes as you busily scan the natural beauty of the beach; all while bright bikinis are begging to distract you from your quest?
At that moment do you ever think to yourself… wow, this scene is perfect… too bad the sun is obliterating nearly all the highlight detail in this brilliantly white sand and crashing waves.
No, you don’t.
Real life isn’t exposed properly half the time, our irises automatically adjust to compensate but their range is limited. While you’re floating there, squinting out across the ocean with tightly pinched eye-lids you are fully aware of the limitations inherent in a human eye.
Any claim that a great photograph can’t enjoy the same freedom of tonal range is absurd. Blinding highlights and all.
Sometimes, like a tropical beach, a photo simply demands to live it’s life overexposed. This was one of those times.
I realize the simplicity of photographing the most photographed subject on the planet, beautiful girls, is a bit of a slap in the face to the artists I think really changed the world. Picasso’s Guernica, Michaelangelo’s David or one of Van Gogh’s many intense self-portraits – just to name a handful.
Those are the true great artists… I totally get that. That being said….
I am trying to say something with the images I create. It’s an undercurrent of thought lost on most, I think. It’s so easy to get swallowed up in the over-saturation of images of beautiful people and not look past the surface. We live in a country where you can walk into the grungiest truck stop in the country and find beautiful images of the most beautiful people in the world, sitting, smiling back at us. That has to have an effect on our psychological underpinnings. How in the world could it not?
Well, I’m not sure what I’m saying yet, I sometimes catch glimpses and have ‘AHA’ moments… and tonight I created an image that made me look at it a bit longer than most… almost like it was speaking something.
Sometimes when I let me mind wander amidst my thoughts of what I’m trying to say I think about ideas and they build upon each other, if I let my mind wander enough the ideas tend to collapse under the complexity of their own weight and I’m left with nothing but a wonder… a wonder about what I’m trying to say… I know there’s something there but I don’t always know what exactly.
Do you know what I mean?
Model is the beautiful Bel. I spotted her while on a date with my wife and friends, she was a server at the sushi restaurant we happened to be at… I couldn’t help but ask if she’d let me photograph her.
I was invited to shoot some original creations by Michelle Boucher, a fabulously talented fashion designer and wardrobe stylist, as part of the Art Meets Fashion Event.
This presents a great chance to talk a little bit about the role of a photographer in a shoot like this. I shoot for myself almost 90% of the time (meaning I shoot for fun, not for money). I do have experience working for commercial clients though and obviously when someone else is paying for the shoot they generally have the final say. If an employee from the client is on set then generally that is the art director or creative director, their job is to make sure the final images fit their vision both conceptually and technically. I won’t get into the details… but if you want more details feel free to ask!
One reason I work so often with the same team of stylists is because we’ve developed an amazing rapport which allows creativity to flow extraordinarily well. Over time we’ve developed an unspoken system in identifying the art director on each individual shoot. The system is simple, whoever came up with the idea to shoot is the one dubbed as the “art director” for that particular night.
In this instance Michelle Boucher was the bona fide art director, she booked the styling team and models and we were shooting her custom designs. When I was brought on board the designs weren’t even finished yet, but Michelle Boucher provided a sketch so that I could help come up with a concept to shoot around.
I immediately was reminded of beautifully feathered birds of the rainforest, the symmetrical pleats breaking up a slimmed body with vibrant, yet natural, colors. I couldn’t help but think about how fashion has always been heavily influenced by animals. The more exotic the animal the more prestige the wardrobe signaled.
Within the last few decades wearing dead animals has gone out of fashion and recently it has become in fashion (again) to use live animals as accessories in the form of miniature dogs carried around in custom doggie-bags costing thousands of dollars.
Well, the concept that started sprouting in my mind was a tongue in cheek homage to the pet as a fashion statement.
Since we were shooting for a charitable cause I felt comfortable asking the good folks at Scales and Tails if they’d be open to volunteering to bring some of their animals to use in the shoot and I was so excited they agreed!
On the day of the shoot we ran into a little bit of a dilemma which I described in detail in an earlier blog post where I was faced with the decision about whether to skip the animals and just shoot the wardrobe or find a way to proceed with the shoot as planned.
It was an easy decision because to me there is no question… the role of the photographer is to convey a personal style with every image shot, and in this instance I (along with the entire creative team) set out to tell a story based squarely in my favorite theme, whimsical fashion. This is what fashion photography is all about… anything else is just a snapshot.
These are the results of our efforts, which were a little rushed and a little hectic due to some last minute changes and hiccups in our plans but I love how Michelle’s designs seem to become a sort of urban camouflage blending into the backdrop of Salt Lake City while the animals stand out extraordinarily. A serendipitous result that I love!
Custom Wardrobe by Michelle Boucher
Hair by Steven Robertson
Makeup by Paula Dahlberg
Animal wrangling by Shane Richins at Scales and Tales
Models: Paris Gibson, Jaymie Vanderhoof Jessica Garcia
Photography Assistants: Ryan Muirhead, Steven Wood, Tiffany Sanchez
Long time readers of my blog will know that earlier this year (an internet year is the equivalent of 20 years in regular life) I made a few posts about trying to break out of a comfort-zone. I was working with some of the most amazing talent in the nation and creating images that were blowing people away, but at the same time I felt like I was a bit on cruise control.
I decided to take a bit of a break and get back to my roots, back to when I fell in love with photography and shoot some great ideas with nothing more than myself and a model and whatever props we could gather up. So I started test-shooting like crazy, I even added an email-application on my website for interested people to apply. The link was active from April 30th through September 21st and in that time I received 182 applications. That averages out to a little more than one application EVERY SINGLE day during day while it was up. Thank you so much to everyone for the interest in shooting with me, I am honored, I couldn’t even shoot as many as I wanted to, so if you didn’t get contacted please know that you very well could have been one I wish I would have had time for! :-)
I was looking for new potential muses, models that transcended the ordinary and inspired new and crazy ideas. Over the course of 2010 I tested with a total of 33 new faces for the first time. In that group of 33 I found exactly what I was looking for. New sources of creative energy and several models you’ll be seeing a lot more of in my upcoming work!
Today I wanted to take a second and share some of my favorite images from the models I’m most excited about discovering this past year… not all of these images were from our first shoot together but every one of these images share a couple things in common.
EDIT::: I’m told this gallery has trouble functioning in Internet Explorer, while I work on getting that fixed please use http://www.firefox.com, http://www.google.com/chrome, or http://www.opera.com/ – which are all better than Internet Explorer by the way. :-)
I have since taken the application off of my website, it made me too sad to have so much demand and so little time to fulfill it… So what’s coming next? Well, stay tuned! :-)
This trick is no secret. In fact it’s not even a trick. This simple compositional principle is deep rooted in our subconsciousness’ desire for simplicity and completeness. If something is too simple it’s not complete, if it’s too complex it’s not simple… the triangle has the envied position of being the simplest of all the polygons, after all it has the minimum number of lines required to ‘close’ the shape and promote it from a simple line to a polygon. Simple and complete, all rolled into a single entity.
The triangle has hypnotized artists for thousands of years. But you already know all that crap.
In fact, if you have read just a tiny bit about art or paid a little attention as you look at paintings by the masters (you do go to museums right?) then you know what I’m talking about.
So why read it again? Because I’m more entertaining than your stupid art class, that’s why.
It’s hard to believe that Leonardo Davinci painted the Mona Lisa over five HUNDRED years ago. What better example of the brilliant use of a single, prominent triangle to create a stunning and simple composition. But wait you say, “That’s not a triangle, all the corners are cropped out.” Well, guess what, an implied triangle is just as strong as an actual triangle… and if that doesn’t satisfy your naysaying read the evidence which suggests (and I believe) Leonardo’s masterpiece was originally larger, and probably included the entire shape.
So there.
As the photographer you have ultimate control of what you show between the four edges of your frame, that is your kingdom to create whatever it is you want. Do you need manipulate your whole photo-taking existence around worshiping the triangle and putting one into every image? Absolutely not, but if you spot the opportunity to invite the serendipitous triangle into your images when the opportunity presents itself then I think it will give your work that extra, subtle blend of simplicity and completeness.
I’m not really sure why these triangles exist, I didn’t really plan them. I think they are just part of a sub-conscious preference towards arranging subjects into triangles, or maybe it’s a sub-conscious attraction I have towards selecting these types of ‘happy accidents’ in the editing process. Whatever it is you’ve probably noticed that a lot of my images tend to feature prominent triangles, here are just a handful. All shot within the last 10 months.
I’d love to read your comments and thoughts about why YOU think triangles improve composition, or if you disagree completely. Comment away!
I used different equipment to achieve each of these images but here is a list of some of the items I used most. Links will take you directly to the B&H Photo Video product page for the individual item (the more you buy from them using my links the more encouraged they are to send me product to review for this blog, keep that in mind!) 
Love is such a complex term that it means a thousand different things to a thousand different people. Even the same person can have different definitions of love depending on the context. For instance I love my wife, I love my son, I love my mom, I love my sisters, I love my pets, I love to play Call of Duty and I love photography – and each one of those is in a completely different way. Yet they all have the same beginnings. The beginning of love is always a willingness to get to know and appreciate… in other words, the time you invest into something can convert into love. It’s easy to become infatuated with something, that only takes a day or two… but to truly fall in love? Well, sometimes that takes a lifetime, rightfully so.
Love is not a unilaterally positive emotion, love is difficult. Almost all the pain, heartache, stress and inadequacies you’ll ever feel in life are because you love. That pain is absolutely necessary to keep you grounded though, there needs to be something that pulls you back into reality. The hard times are simply the growing pains of happiness… learn to embrace them as much as the good times, after all the bad times are the best evidence you have that life is important to you.
You can’t choose to fall in love with something. It doesn’t work that way. Yet the more you understand something the easier it becomes to love. In order to love something you need to know it, on a level deeper than most. This concept applies to people, to animals, to objects, to art, to hobbies to music and anything else you can think of.
Really loving any pursuit, whether it be photography, video games, snowboarding, rock climbing or whatever, is not easy. Getting to know something well enough to love it takes can easily take 10,000 plus hours. This time you invest usually cannot be invested elsewhere. When I’m shooting I’m not spending time with my family, I’m not playing video games, I’m not reading my favorite books or watching great movies – I’m shooting. If you’re not careful a unilaterally focused obsession can develop, and that’s not good. Make sure there is a balance in the things you love. Make time for family and friends and other things in life, but if you want to be great at something you’re going to have to be border-line obsessed. Genius is a thin grey line away from madness…
Great artists throughout history have struggled managing the thin line between a healthy love of their craft and a manic obsession that drives them mad. If you want to create something that people can’t help but look at then consign yourself to this life struggle. As a visual artist you need to be in love, but as a person you need to not be obsessive. Inspiration is found in the deepest recesses of human emotion. That doesn’t mean the art needs to be emotionally charged, or poignant or loaded with metaphorical observations of life. It simply means you need to experience feelings beyond the ordinary, that is if you want inspiration beyond the mundane. When I refer to art I simply mean something that people want to look at, not necessarily something that has to change the world.
Photography is only part of what a photographer does. To be a great photographer you need to learn to love the subject you shoot and the tools you use. You need love learning about controlling and manipulating light, expressions, moods, styling, ideas, post-processing and probably most importantly you need to love all the people involved that help make everything happen. Having a very loving and understanding wife sure doesn’t hurt either!
The more comfortable you are with your camera, your lights, or your models the more mental energy is available to focus on your imagination! Original, unique, and bold ideas will get you noticed, they also require imagination above and beyond the ordinary. It’s only after you’ve invested the time falling in love with your craft and your tools that you are able to focus nearly completely on the idea and have the confidence to pull it off!
I’m nothing but a fledgling photographer that takes images of beautiful people, I know this. I want to be something more though. I want to make images that get noticed by more and more people… Sometimes people see me as something more, just recently someone sent me a message asking how I got to where I am as a photographer… well, the advice I have for them is the same advice I have for myself, the only way to get to the next level is simple… just fall in love.
Recently I reviewed an Elinchrom Octa, I was supposed to send it back a couple weeks ago but I decided that I wanted to fall in love… well, my time is up and I’m sending it back tomorrow but here is a smattering of results from the last couple weeks. Evidence of a fledgling love affair with a great light shaping tool! The separation will be short though, I’m ordering one from B&H this week. :-)
Most of these images were three light setups with two rectangle softboxes providing the key and the Elinchrom Octa as the main light, a couple of them were a classic over-under light setup.
A couple weeks ago I talked about The Art of the Pose where I discussed three styles of directing models.
Well within those styles are techniques, some simple and some complex. Over the years I have developed a lot of techniques to get the look I want on a shoot. Here’s one of my favorites!
Expression stealing is a term I came up with to describe the technique of making a model make a certain expression, without specifically asking him/her to do it. In other words it’s always better to make a model smile, rather than ask her to smile.
Take this image for instance:
If I want a laugh I don’t tell a model to laugh, I make her laugh… and not with a lame joke either, that’s not a real laugh. For instance, the best laugh you can make is that one of slight embarrassment, so to get one I’ll tell a model to smile [take a picture] then frown [take a picture] then smile again. At first I slowly take pictures, waiting for her expression to catch up… then I go faster, and faster until she starts feeling so ridiculous at how how odd it feels that she just can’t help but laugh out loud! In other words, I spend ten frames shooting something I’ll never use in order to get a true laugh out.
You, as the director, have to figure out a way to authentically make the model make a true expression and at the exact right second snatch it away! That’s what I call Expression Stealing!
Any model that shoots with me knows that I usually talk to them throughout the entire shoot, I ask a lot of questions. Little do they know that I’m silently, usually sub-conciously, noticing their reactions. I don’t even really care a whole lot about most the questions I ask or the answers I receive (in fact I usually forget about what they say immediately) but what I am remembering is what their reactions are like.
So I thought I’d do a little exercise to illustrate this idea… Without either of them knowing anything about my experiment (at the time) I put the model (Sarah) on the phone with Ryan Muirhead in the middle of a test shoot last week… I gave them no explanation as to why they were talking, I just told them they had to keep talking. Sarah was able to stay on the phone for over a FULL minute before ending the conversation and passing me back the phone.
The whole time they were talking I was busy stealing genuine expressions. All in 70 seconds.
(CLICK IT FOR A BIGGER SIZE)
By the way, expression stealing is much more than just saying something and capturing the reaction, sometimes the reactions build and build on each other… the more complex the reactions get the better the expression.
The ironic thing is that I love shooting models in a nearly expressionless state. When I think about it I realize there is a genuine reason for why I love shooting blank expressions so much.
It’s easy to make someone laugh but making a model ignore every care in the world and completely relax? That’s a bit more tough. Not only do I love the challenge but I love the idea of blank…
Once you’ve removed expression you are left with a blank stare, and isn’t it interesting how hypnotizing a blank stare can be.
Go ahead, take a few seconds longer than normal and look at the image below… notice how, with a little imagination, it makes you feel like you’re looking into yourself. Like it’s a mirror reflecting back the emotions that are currently on the edge of your mind?
Or is that just me?
Links take you to B&H with additional specs and current prices.
If anyone tells you otherwise then they are a bona fide genius or they don’t realize how bad they are at either directing the action or being a model.
Some models are simply born with the ability to move freely in front of the camera, some are not. Either way it is the job of the photographer to direct the shoot with just the right amount of attention. Too much or too little are equally bad, and the tricky part is every shoot is different.
Over the years I have had a lot of experience working with models, in all that time I’ve learned a lot of tricks for directing the action. How to make someone smile naturally, how to make someone laugh, how to make someone feel comfortable and how to start ordinary people on the path to being great models! As always this process takes two people. A director that knows their stuff and a model with enough talent and passion to actually make the shoot better.
Here is my single best piece of advice for working with new models.
And know which one is best for the particular shoot and the particular model
1. Meticulously guide the action
Many photographers shy away from this technique, either they lack the confidence or on the opposite extreme they proudly wear the badge of honor that “I do not pose the model, it’s too contrived and I want PURITY in my photos.” I’ve got news for everyone, the photos you see in magazines in advertising and editorials? Lots of those are meticulously directed to look like they weren’t directed. It is a rare combination for the model and photographer to be so in synch that absolutely no direction is necessary… though it does happen.
Personally I find myself using this style most when I’m doing conceptual shoots, close-ups and beauty head shots. I also revert to this style when the model is unexperienced or unconfident in her actions and just needs the extra help.
2. Shut up and Shoot
Sometimes a model knows his/her craft so well that any advice you give them couldn’t possibly make things better. Just watch and move your camera/lights accordingly.
3. Inspire and Suggest
My favorite style! I work with a lot of brand new models, a majority of them have never even posed before. This style is a great way to give the model confidence enough to experiment with posing, in doing so you can mentally assess their modeling talent and create a collaboration worth documenting.
Brynlee is not a professional model. A month or so ago Ryan Muirhead and I went in to get a quick bite to eat on a lazy saturday afternoon, as we walked into the fast food restaurant we both spotted her. She stopped us both in our tracks, literally, and Ryan and I exchanged a look.
She was beautiful.
So I did something I rarely do, only the second time in as long as I can remember I wrote a note on the back of a contest entry form they had at the front register. It said simply:
“My name is Jake Garn, I am a photographer and I’d love to photograph you. No charge. Check out my work and email me if you’re interested.”
I left my website at the bottom, I only had to wait a day or two for an email.
Since then I’ve photographed Brynlee a couple of times, the images at top are from her third photoshoot. I gently guided her to play with her dress, shake her hair, stand on tip-toes, and just play around. Then I just shut-up and watched, click… click…. click…
According to the time-stamps on these images we started shooting this look at 7:13 exactly. The last frame from this look was clicked at 7:18 and 6 seconds.
5 minutes and 6 seconds. I think I may make a habit out of doing the five minute modeling challenge in the future… if you’d like to see future 9-image collages like this one leave a comment and let me know!
Classic lighting from both sides, put the softboxes as close as you can to the model and expose accordingly. For this one I put the left-strobe slightly behind the model and the right-strobe slightly in front of her, the ratio of each strobe is about 1:1.
muse: Classical Mythology, -n a goddess that inspires a creative artist.
A model shows up on time and well prepared for a shoot. A good model takes direction and looks like a natural in front of the camera. An excellent model makes any photographer they work with appear even better than they actually are.
Then there is the muse. The muse is the rarest of all models. They are all of the above but they somehow inspire the photographer to search for reasons to pick up the camera, any reason at all. They participate in the shoot unlike anyone else and share the passion for creating something new and interesting. This passion is contagious. Enough passion can change almost anything in the world, including your photography.
I have LOVED shooting with dozens of models, I’ve really, really loved shooting a smaller group of ten or so models and I can count the number of muses and potential muses I’ve stumbled upon over the past ten years on one hand. Here are just three of them… though a couple more are unlisted. :-)
First there was Katherine.
I do, and will always, credit Katherine as the main reason I eventually became good at photography. Her bubbly quirky personality was and is magnetic to be around. If she was born 4,000 years ago wars would have been fought over her. Immediately after shooting her I’d want to shoot her again, and again, and again. This was in the day before digital cameras and it was much more expensive to shoot but I didn’t care. We had a lot of good times me and her and she always inspired me to take better photos. I still get to shoot her every few months or so today but is getting less and less as she gets busier and busier, though she will always be my very first muse.
Mara sent me an email at the very tail end of 2004.
She attached a couple snapshots of herself and said she was interested in modeling. I was immediately inspired by the amazingly rounded structure in her face, it had a very rare chiseled quality that I couldn’t possibly describe with mere words. I was only able to shoot her for a year or two before she moved away to L.A. but in that short amount of time I became addicted… I wish she’d visit Utah again!
Carly and I had our first shoot in July 2007, just before her 18th birthday.
I knew Carly would be amazing almost immediately. That rare combination of a fear-nothing personality to a bewitching shyness the contradictions in Carly are endless, which shows in the way she models. She fluidly moves from pose to pose, constantly shifting between whacky and serious. She’s amazingly fun to shoot and is the reason for this post…
To celebrate our three year anniversary of our very first shoot Carly convinced me we should do a classic shoot from the food series I worked on a couple years ago, a series Carly helped me with many, many times!
As she’ll tell you I was very skeptical, I shot so many images during that little phase that I thought it would be impossible to think of ideas that I hadn’t already done, but it was Carly and when she gets something in her head…
So there we were at the grocery store shopping for food, we got a number of items before meeting up with Steven Robertson (who volunteered to do some styling)… it was after the shoot I realized something… the food series from a couple years ago was full of quirky ideas but it felt like just a warm-up, now I had to really make a series out of it.
This one suggestion from one model not only sparked an amazing shoot that night, but I have since shot three more girls for a new series based around food… which is blowing my mind!
8/9/10 EDIT :: Images from this series will be available in the November 2010 issue of 944 Magazine.
© 2004 - 2012 Jake Garn
