Get in touch with your feelings

There is a certain science to doing great stock images, and I want to share a few thoughts on something I have realized. Coming from a background of meditation and the journey of self discovery I am used to concentrating my attention internally. And trying to apply this to all situations in life naturally I also use it in relation to my stock photography. What I am about to touch upon is the art of being completely situated in your own consciousness in a time of external turbulence.

When I am on the set with my stylist, productions manager, assistants, friends and a handful of models it comes in very handy being able to shut out the world of externals and concentrate on my own internal creative process. Actually I believe this to be a prerequisite for good model instruction. If you cannot “get into the mood” yourself how on earth will you convey the emotions of the image at hand to your talent? Superficial instruction can often result in superficial images. Of course sometimes you work with extraordinary models who are indeed first class actors and who just know what you are looking for when reading your brief. However more often than not you need to be on top of the situation. You need to clearly define your vision. If we don’t know what we want our output is going to be random. Ocassionally that can be good, and indeed we need an element of that, but that is only a small part of the big picture. Relying on randomness is like playing the lottery … and out goes the science. Get where I’m going?

A method I often use is taking a moment (standing in front of the models and everyone else) where I close my eyes and sort of have a mental conversation with myself. Could go something like: “Ok, so if you are on a romantic vacation and you take a walk on the beach alone, how would you stand?, how would you interact?, how would your jolly, free and enlivened personality live out the situation?, what emotions do you go through? etc.” Answering these question you get into the mood of the “scene” and then you explain your thoughts and conclusions to your models. Of course you have a shootplan, but this is about “hitting the refresh button”. This method will make your models at ease and enable them to forget all the other people, the flashes, reflectors etc. And in this way I believe you get as close to reality as possible; you create an environment where the models get emotionally involved, which is the basis for natural expressions.

Questions and comments are welcome.
Regards,
laflor

Back to the world of stock photography

After about 3 weeks of stock silence (also known as vacation) it is once again time to wake up sell tiny bits of frozen time (photos). Thought I would just share a few of today’s develops from a shoot I did with two of my favorite models Anton and Martez from Durbanville in South Africa. We did a full day of shooting and ended up with 2576 RAWs. Here comes two picks from todays developing. What do you think?:

Pregnant shoot

Just had a spontaneous shoot with a pregnant model that simply couldn’t wait anymore… you could almost hear the kid shouting “10, 9, 8, 7, 6… Sometimes you gotta strike while the iron is hot …
This is a very “classic” stock image, but somehow I like the composition and the concept enough to share it with you guys.

New medical pics

Right now I’m developing a medical shoot I did a while ago. It is so important to have credible styling. My stylist and I always try to reserve plenty of time for thorough research on the theme we shoot. What are the “real life” people doing, and how are they doing it. What props will make the shoots credible. A professional should not be able to recognize the image as a setup. He or she should think “O, how nice of that real doctor to set off time for a portrait. I wish I worked there and had time for that kind of stuff”.
Have a beautiful day.
laflor

Just wanna share a few pics from a stock shoot I’m developing

… well not that I shoot anything else but stock!
Note thyselves that these images have not been through retouch yet.
They are just meant as a preview for you ever hungry designers out there.

How to shoot groups interacting

Planning the good shot
From my experience creating good stock images is a fine balance between the creative control of the photographer and/or the art director and the creative impulse of the talent. As photogs we always need to know where we are going, what we want next. Otherwise you will be wasting sooo much time standing there trying to come up with the next shot. Here I am refering to the wonders of shootplanning, the secret to calmness and mental tranquility for any succesful photog. In case you are wondering shootplanning means to sit down in a quiet place thinking hard about the storyline for the day – you do your research and creative gymnastics and come up with “A PLAN”. Failing to plan is planning to fail, remember that!

In charge
It is a good idea to remember that the model is there for YOU, just waiting for your directions. We really have to be in charge. Remember that the model does not know what you see through the lens, and more often than not I find the models amazed at what was just captured when I show them the back of the camera.

Instructing the models
I mentioned a balance between the creative control of the photog and the creative impulse of the talent. From my experience with more than 50 stock shoots what I often do is that I instruct the models about the situation they are playing out. And then I ask them to sit there for a minute thinking about how that would be in real life, discuss it with them, and then I “let go”. I instruct the models to joke around with the situation to “play it out”. I get them to play with the words that would have been said in a real life situation. For instance the lady in the picture was joking about firing all the employees and withdrawing all their earnings. You don’t know that when you see the picture, but you do get a feeling of genuine emotion. You sort of let them go their own way hopefully almost forgetting that you are there pointing a huge piece of molded glass towards them, and in return you get to capture real people interaction with other real people. Not nervous wrecks sitting there trying to squeeze out a frozen smile while you stand there with a pool of sweat by you feet shouting “smile, smile … I need happy businesspeople”.

Play it out – but still in control
It is important that you remember to get the models to freeze so that you can record a tack sharp frame. Without the sharpness you might as well take a nap instead. That would be more productive. I ask the models to fluctuate between genuine interaction and “locking the frame”. Say I ask them to “explain something to the others”. The star of the picture might say “Now dear colleagues I am going to give you a huge raise and a Mercedes Benz as bonus for all the hard work”, and then when the emotions come (the others smile or laugh) my models always know they have to freeze for at least 2 clicks on the camera. There is a fine balance here. And you will need a lot of practice before this becomes effortless. And of course you models also need to be serious about the situation.

How do you deal with your models? Experiences, comments, tips, tricks?

Regards,
laflor

Sample from business shoot

For you dear designers out there this is an example of what is going on iStock.com within a few months …

Gathering model releases via Adobe Bridge

If you want to learn a simple and easy way to gather model releases into one document for upload to a stock site like istockphoto.com look no further.
I’ve made a simple video tutorial showing how fast this can be done. If you have comments or questions please feel free. I will be happy to help or to receive suggestions for improvement. Enjoy!

All the best,
Laflor

PS. You can also take the written tutorial here on my blog here. There you will also find crucial installation instructions for Bridge CS4 (CS4 does not have the function by default, only CS3 has).

Golf

Last night I was editing a golf shoot I did last month. I couldn’t stop looking at this image (shot with a 70-200 2.8, at 200mm 4.0):

Gathering model releases in Bridge CS3

Guide for gathering Model Releases in Bridge CS3 (if you have CS4 look at the very bottom of the tutorial)

It can be quite a hassle to gather model releases before uploading to a stock site. Especially if you have an image of a large group of people.
I have taken the time to figure out how this can be done in a fast and easy way (provided you have already scanned your model releases and that you agency allows multiple MRs in one document).

Here goes:

1. Open all the model releases in Bridge CS3

2. Select the relevant model releases for the image you are uploading

3. Go to the menu Tools/Photoshop/Contact Sheet II

4. In the dialog do the following:

Source Images: “Selected Images from Bridge”

Document:
Units: Pixels

Width: 1500

Heigth: the number of MR x 2000 (eg. 3 MRs would be 6000px, 8 would be 16000px etc.)

Resolution: 300 pixels/inch

Mode: RGB Color
☑ Flatten All Layers

Thumbnails:
Place: down first     ☑Use Auto-Spacing

Columns: 1 (always 1)

Rows: the number of model releases

☐  Rotate for best fit

☐  Filename As Caption

Press “OK”

This is what it should look like if you have 3 model releases:

Save as JPEG

Save with quality setting “10″

This is the output you will get (in a very large version ofcourse):

Do ask if you have any questions.

I will post a video tutorial on the subject at a later time.

laflor

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If you have CS4 you need to download and install this plugin for Contact Sheet II to work. It take a few minutes of concentration to figure it out, but after that your life becomes easy:

http://tinyurl.com/5e475x

Here are the relevant installation instructions:

If you would like to continue using the legacy ContactSheetII and/orPicture Package plug-ins, please follow these steps:

1. From the Photoshop CS4 install disc (or the Goodies folder in the folder you can download through the link above), drop the //<language>/Goodies/Optional Plug-Ins/Automate/ContactSheetII plug-in into the //Adobe Photoshop CS4/Plug-ins/Automate folder (this is for both Contact Sheet and Picture Package).
2. From the Photoshop CS4 install disc (or the Goodies folder in the folder you can download through the link above), drop the //<language>/Goodies/Presets/Layouts folder into the //Adobe Photoshop CS4/Presets folder and restart Photoshop.

IMPORTANT: To add this legacy functionality back into Bridge (as a menu item), do the following:

1. From the Photoshop CS4 install disc (or the Goodies folder in the folder you can download through the link above), drop the //<language>/Goodies/Optional plugins/Bridge Startup Scripts/photoshop_contact_sheet_ii folder and the photoshop_contact_sheet_ii.jsx file into following locations:
   • Mac OS: Harddrive/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Startup Scripts CS4/Adobe Photoshop/
   • Windows XP: //Program Files/Common Files/Adobe/Startup Scripts CS4/Adobe Photoshop/
   • Windows Vista: //Program Files (x86)/Common Files/Adobe/Startup Scripts CS4/Adobe Photoshop/
2. Restart Bridge.