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!

How to Steal an Expression

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:

This is an amazing expression from Sarah

Sarah’s expression is a unique and complex blend of disdain & joy, boredom & fascination, pity & fear… if I wanted to get this look from Sarah again I could tell her those descriptions but she would have no idea what I was talking about.  There simply is no good way I can think of to tell a model to do this… but I have a thousand ways to make her spontaneously give me a look similar to this!

You can’t describe your way to this expression… you have to steal it.

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…”

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.

“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?

Equipment used to achieve these images

Links take you to B&H with additional specs and current prices.

• Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
• Lens: Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM
• Tripod: Manfrotto 190XPROB
• Tripod Grip: Manfrotto Ballhead (322RC2)
• Memory Card: SanDisk Extreme 16GB
• Strobes: Two Elinchrom 600RX Monolights
• Light Modifier: Rotalux Midi Octa by Elinchrome (53″)
• Light Modifier: Medium Photoflex Softbox with grid
• Software: Adobe Lightroom

Faces

Do multiple faces mean automatic super-villain status?

++++

I am nothing if not a mad scientist, had I any talents in biology or any sort of life sciences I would be the guy in a lab that accidentally created a super hero/villain out of myself and at this moment a blockbuster movie would be in production about my life. It would be a massive success and I would be stumbling out of the car with Paris Hilton as we speak… and my wife would be pissed but she’d understand because I wasn’t myself, it was the mad science that made me freak out.

Alas, I have no biology skills whatsoever… but that doesn’t mean I can’t mess around in a digital lab.

Earlier today I thought to myself, what if I took five beautiful women and combined them into one face.  Would the resulting image be some sort of super-villain or simply an ode to the simple beauty that exists in every face, in every girl, in every country of the world.  You be the judge.

Beauty Portrait

Showing a few simple techniques for retouching a beauty portrait in Adobe Photoshop.

Located about 1.5 miles from my front door it’s an abandoned school of some sort, since it’s probably trespassing I won’t mention any more about the location so don’t ask, but lets just say we found a way into this completely boarded up building and discovered that what appeared to be a small brick structure is absolutely giant! Two floors of long hallways and dozens and dozens of rooms in various levels of muck and grime. Some are pitch dark and some are lit by broken sky lights. Some rooms smell like ‘yard sale’ and some smell like ‘hillbilly farmer’s market’. Some rooms are beautiful with vintage wallpaper and some are absolutely creepy, like the one with a whole bunch of baby dresses strewn about with the words, “Satan was here” scrawled across the wall in thick yellow paint.

What better place to bring a couple of models, a talented wardrobe designer and a half dozen gorgeous hand-made dresses! A big giant thank you goes out to everyone for having the absolute worst cell phone rings in the history of creepy cell phone rings. As you are wandering long, pitch black hallways with two weak flashlights there is no better sound to hear than a slow melodic whistling eight rooms over when your party of six is all a short arms length away… that split second it takes to realize it’s a phone in someone’s bag is not a pleasant split second to say the least.

I’d say the creepiest experience occurred shortly after the shoot in the purple dress and pearls, we had found our next room (the white insane asylum type room) and I went back to collect all the lights to re-set them up. (PHOTO TIP! I used a Lumedyne 1,000WS strobe with battery pack for this entire shoot) I walked back, by myself, and collected the light stand, battery, camera, and then I noticed an almost new bright yellow backpack sitting next to my camera. I was positive that it wasn’t there when I set up everything so I figured it belonged to one of the girls so I picked that up too and made my way back down the long hallway. When I arrived back to the group I set everything down and held out the bag expecting its’ owner to thankfully take it from me, instead I got a bunch of odd looks. The bag belonged to no one. In a house of ruinous decay somehow the one pristine object found it’s way next to my camera…

Models: Kenzie and Cassie, Wardrobe by: McKell Maddox

Katherine Franco – Shortly before things took a dramatic turn for the worse.

First, I must say that Katherine is probably the main reason I eventually became a decent photographer. I started shooting her in 2001 and it is still my pleasure to shoot her almost eight years later, I’m shooting her again tomorrow as a matter-of-fact! She has been a tremendously good sport and the mere fact that she even still talks to me after what happened five years ago is insane, thank you Katherine!

So, onto the story. We drove towards the Nevada border, about 40 minutes west of Salt Lake City before turning off at the Dugway exit. For those of you that don’t know, there is NOTHING at the Dugway exit. Just a long paved road that leads to a military nuclear waste plant and the skeletal remains of a long abandoned gas station.

We arrived and shot a couple images at the gas station while a lone, broken down semi-truck, along with it’s driver, watched from a distance. Eventually his watching made us both feel a little weird so we decided to explore further south, down the single lane road. We discovered what appeared to be an ancient, dried up lake bed. It was solid as a rock so we drove out and shot until sun-down on the crackled dirt. With a completely unobstructed view of the setting sun, and a bright white giant reflector at our feet we were able to capture some amazing face shots and continued shooting until the sun disappeared below the horizon.

Beautifully oblivious to upcoming events.

That’s when the trouble started, as the sun went down the air unexpectedly cooled very quickly, and by the time we made it back to my car we were both freezing. I loaded up the gear and we set off to leave, but there was trouble. The once cement lake bed had become a mushy mud soup, after making it about two feet my Xterra was sunk to its axles in thick, dark mud. So, we got out and dutifully did a little digging, and a little pushing and a little peeling out and within minutes the three of us (Katherine, the car, and I) were covered in mud. It would have almost been funny if it weren’t for the biblical swarm of mosquitoes that started to arrive.

I have no idea what these mosquitoes ate when there weren’t people stuck in the mud because there wasn’t a living thing in sight, yet suddenly every mosquito in a 10 mile radius was charging into us. It probably didn’t help that my car was bright yellow, and apparently the mosquitoes LOVE yellow. The ones that weren’t distracted by vigorously attacking me and Katherine were attaching themselves and covering the yellow paint almost completely. We dashed for safety inside without even spending a split second thinking about all the gloppy mud we were wearing. We slammed the doors and immediately realized that oh, about a million mosquitoes followed us inside.

Did I mention we were too far in the middle of nowhere for my cell phone to work? Well we were.

Back to the story. This is the part where Katherine lost her ever-loving-mind. Instead of calmly killing the bajillion mosquitoes (the million from earlier had kids) and then thinking through our situation like reasonable adults she just jumped out and started running like a crazed lunatic. Screaming, and swatting. Swatting and screaming. I figured she would eventually realize her mistake and turn around and come back, but she didn’t. She made it to the pavement and started running towards the freeway, swatting and screaming, screaming and swatting.

“Great,” I thought to myself. Now I have to follow her because we all know this is how horror movies start, and I didn’t want someone to kill her. I needed to keep her alive as a distraction for when the killer came after ME! Juuuust kidding… mostly.

So off I went, into the sea of soupy mud and starving mosquitoes. She had a good quarter mile lead, and since she was absolutely out-of-her-flipping-mind she had a good deal more adrenaline than me so as we ran the mile or two or three back to the freeway she kept putting more and more distance between us. Plus I had to stop to pick up her shoes, which apparently abandoned her when they realized she had gone insane.

As it got darker and darker I started to wonder what our plan was. Maybe we’d eventually get cell phone service closer to the freeway, maybe we would have to spend the night in the car, maybe we could throw shoes at the passing cars on the freeway until eventually one of them stopped… about the time I started wondering what Katherine’s arm would taste like I realized something that scared the living piss out of me! The trucker was still there! The trucker was getting out of his truck! Katherine was talking to the trucker! Katherine was GETTING INTO THE TRUCK! All joking aside, this was seriously starting to sound like a horror movie.

Now I started running like I was insane! Mosquitoes started splatting against my face, the five extra pounds of mud on my shoes started exploding onto the pavement, brown goo sploshing about with every powerful step like I was throwing rocks into a sewage treatment plant.

It seemed like an eternity before I reached that truck, but when I finally did Katherine was still alive. Visibly terrified (her sanity had just recently returned) but alive. We shared the truckers passenger seat and made a one-bar cell phone call to a tow truck, which was a half hour away (assuming they left at that instant – which they didn’t).

So for the next hour or so Katherine and I were regaled by tales from the most well-meaning trucker in the world, who, by the way, was waiting for someone to come fix a flat tire. When he found out that we were there doing a photoshoot he pulled a photo album out from under his seat. I know what you’re thinking, we had to look through boring vacation photos, and Christmases, and photos of the kids… but you would be wrong. We happened to pick the trucker that had been to the “Testicle Festival” just last summer. What is the Testicle Festival you ask? Well, we made that same mistake, and that’s why he pulled the album out.

The Testicle Festival is apparently an annual event where the oldest, most unattractive people in the world all gather together for a big pile of naked posing for inappropriate photos. I have no idea who develops photos taken at the testicle festival, but that person should not be allowed to develop photos anymore.

Katherine and I, of course, had to act very impressed by this photo album. One, we feared death and the even greater fear was being banished to the mosquitoes outside. We over did it though. Our impressed act was so convincing that the second album made it’s appearance. The second album was comprised of photos taken by said truckers wife, and yes, this time the trucker was in the photos.

Why is it that when you are attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes they never have the courtesy to suck the blood out of your eyes?

Yay! The tow truck is here!

“There is no way this truck will pull you out of that mess.” So says the only nearby authority on tow-trucks.

Fast forward through the next two hours as Katherine and I are piled into the front seat of a tow truck on the drive back to Tooele to pick up a damn SNOW CAT, then the drive back to the mud death pit of mosquitoes, oh hey the Testicle Festival guy is still here… “Hello! Thanks for letting us see your kibbles and bits,” we yell as we pass him by.

Now onto the search, in pitch darkness, for my car. Mind you we have no idea where we drove off the road. This part of the story takes a really, really long time and it consists of Katherine waiting inside the truck as me and the snow cat driver drive around the muddy lake. Katherine is too scared of the mosquitoes to step outside and every minute we spend away from her I can’t help but think that she is a goner. For sure, she’s a goner. “Oh, there’s no way she’s going to make it,” I think to myself.

Finally! There’s my car! Oh, my what a depressing, muddy sight. The snow cat easily pulls it onto the pavement, I climb into the muddy tomb and start driving to pick up Katherine’s body… wait! She’s still alive? This horror movie has a HAPPY ending!

Well sort of happy. 7.5 hours after arriving we are leaving with a camera full of stunning photos. We are tired, itchy, muddy… but alive! Now for the 40 minute drive back home to make the whole ordeal just a tad over eight hours.

Katherine, you’re the best! I’m glad you lived.