There are a lot of different forms of trust in the world. There’s the trust a child has for a parent, the trust between a husband and a wife or the trust you have with your doctor not to laugh at you every time you take off your clothes for an exam. But then there is one of the most important trusts two humans can have; the trust between a model and a photographer.
Those of you not in the photography/modeling field or who have never posed for a photo beyond just the mandatory family portrait might not understand what I’m talking about. It comes from trusting that a photographer will show you in your best possible light (pun intended) and not to make you look like a fool or expose your hideously deformed left ear lobe resulting from that childhood turtle incident. (Tell me, what three year-old knows not to give Mr. Snappy a big hug?) There’s a similar trust between an actor and a director as well. An actor depends on the director not to allow them to come across as a huge dork on stage or screen when they “emote” – and some directors obviously aren’t doing their job!
This trust relationship is something I depended on a great deal when I shot professionally but I’ve taken it for granted since my semi-retirement from shooting for a living. Most of my subjects are friends, family or inanimate objects (though some will argue there is little difference between the three) and there is already a level of trust that comes with our relationship. It’s made it a lot easier to get the look I want when the subjects know I’m doing my best to get a great shot of them and that I know what they’re going to do in a shoot. When shooting new people I have to build that trust quickly either by meeting them beforehand and putting their mind at ease or building the rapport on the fly which is almost always more difficult and sometimes quite awkward. This was the primary reason I insisted on meeting clients for an hour or so when I shot weddings or big model shoots and I highly recommend it if time allows.
When I first moved to Minnesota the only photography job I could find was shooting family portraits for church directories throughout the state. It is to this day what I consider Hell for photographers. I’d rather be shooting photojournalism in war-torn Bosnia than to ever have to do that again! I shot thousands of exposures of thousands of people in hundreds of churches and every one of them had to be posed within strict company pose guidelines. I had a large cardboard poster that showed all the “permitted” poses for singles through families of 10 and numbers greater than that were just posed however you could squeeze them in. (We shot a lot of Catholic churches!) It was like some horrid cattle call shoving them in and out as fast as I could, pausing only long enough to ask people to sit up straight or try to quiet a screaming child (a “tickle stick and squeak toy sometimes helped, most times not). The most creative aspect of this Olan-Mills nightmare was making sure everybody had their eyes open and their mouths shut and with 10 or more people this was a chore in itself!
This was assembly line photography that would have made Henry Ford proud. We were given a bulk roll camera (500 shots) the size of a Volkswagen. This thing was cumbersome to say the least and was mounted on a swivel bracket that allowed horizontal or vertical shot angles without removing the camera from its massive tripod. We used a Photogenic two strobe set up bounced out of umbrellas and the stands had strings tied to them so you only had to hold one end in front of the backdrop and stretch the lightstand to the opposite end of the string and set them at a 45 degree angle to the posing point. Your creativity ended at choosing the blue or the brown Old Masters canvas backdrop. Then we opened the gates and the washed (most times) masses flooded in. I would have a maximum of 15 minutes per sitting in which to pose subjects and build trust with them. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it wouldn’t have mattered if I had 15 years to build trust, some folks just hate having their picture taken. If this job taught me anything it was:
- How to build a trust and rapport with complete strangers in 15 minutes or less.
- What that “deer in the headlights” look means when you run into a herd of them standing in the middle of a deserted country road at 3:00 am on a sub-zero winter’s morning. (Hint: they are amazingly destructive creatures at 70 miles per hour!)
To say this form of photography will kill creative spirit is an understatement. The only reprise I got was when I shot photos of the church for their publication. Only then could I explore creativity, lighting, composition and the “fun” side of photography. Still, there’s only so much you can do with stain glass windows and altars before things get boring. To their credit, the Catholics do have some awesome churches and the old ones were fun to explore under the guise of getting a good shot. The most fun I ever had at one of these jobs was when I shot a huge Catholic church in St. Paul. They assigned me my own nun (how many people can say they’ve been assigned a personal nun?) and she was a hoot. I’d guess she was in her late 50’s and a “plainclothes nun” as I call them. No habits, which is a shame because it would have been cool to have a nun in full regalia following you around with a clipboard all day – or maybe kind of ominous. I have rarely met anyone – much less a member of the clergy – with such a fantastic, dry sarcastic sense of humor. I was there for two 16-hour days and this lady made it a delight. They should have used her in an “Outreach to the Condemned” program because she would have converted quite a few sinners.
As usual, I’ve digressed from my original message – the trust between a photographer and their subject. Nowhere has this been more apparent to me then during my latest project. I’m on the cast of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival and with this being my last “official” year on cast I decided I wanted to get some shots of my friends and fellow performers. There are some wonderful people out there and I love them for their abilities, humor and genuine friendship. As a sort of gift I decided I’d shoot black and white portraits of them in character and have been collecting them all season like a trophy hunter. My preference is to “stalk” and catch them unaware. Many of them I know and they trust me to shoot their “good side” but some do not and others just don’t feel comfortable posing for photos. Strange considering we’re there to be seen by thousands of patrons. Shooting them covertly allows me to capture a side of them not often seen in a posed portrait. They’re more relaxed, more natural and genuinely seem to be having fun which is not always easy under the sometimes harsh conditions we encounter. Of course no one ever sees the 5-6 frames that don’t make the cut but again, there’s that trust issue because not only do I want them to like my work I don’t want a bad shot to reflect poorly on me. Some of them I continue to stalk like an elusive white tiger… a white tiger that won’t keep its damn eyes open!
So if you take anything away from my ramblings here it’s to take the time to build trust with your subject if you’re not shooting candidly. Even if it’s just a 15 minute chat it will give them the opportunity to open up to you and share their ideas and fears associated with their shoot. You might even get some great ideas for the shoot because in spite of what we believe, photographers (and especially directors) don’t know everything… probably.
