Moments and movement
Transform your portraiture by adding movement to your pictures and ‘creating’ moments. Jon Devo shares some guidance
Jon devo reveals how to transform your portraiture by adding movement and ‘creating’ moments
It is very easy to slip into autopilot when we work, especially when we’ve worked within the same genre of photography for a number of years. Unless we intentionally step out of our comfort zone and stretch ourselves regularly, it’s easy to become stagnant in our approach. Our quality may not suffer as a result, but if we aren’t testing ourselves, the joy of creating and capturing pictures can dull over time.
Workshops are a great way to exercise our skills and to experiment with some new techniques. Free from the fear of failure or potentially letting down a client on a paid job, workshops give us access to settings, models and the experience of our peers to learn from. I recently joined in at a workshop in Shoreditch, London, hosted by globally renowned professional photography duo Peter Müller and Jean Noir, to exercise my portraiture photography muscles. Their physical working style, which focuses on movement and creating moments, is very different from my own. Despite my experience I immersed myself in the activities and walked away with some valuable tips and techniques that I will share with you, along with some guidance gleaned from my own time behind the camera.
Connecting and communication
Jean and Peter have contrasting approaches to portrait photography: one focuses on creating
a vivid sense of place and moment, while the other likes to work almost like a film director encouraging his models to move through the scene as he captures their actions. As photographers, some of us may find the second way of working very alien, especially if we’ve not met our model previously. Which is why it is imperative to get to know your model and find a way to connect with them. Creating a connection with a stranger isn’t always the easiest thing, however; it can be positively daunting, particularly with less-experienced models.
Make some time before you begin shooting to speak with your sitter, show interest in their time as a model, ask about previous work or their motivations. Models will feel much more at ease if they feel you’ve taken some time to learn about how they like to work and to discover which side of their face they favour. It’s also beneficial to explore what they are comfortable with in terms of photographic styles and how they like to take direction. Small talk can go a long way to helping you form a working partnership that translates into powerful portraits. At the end of the day, if you can cultivate a trust and rapport with the people you work with, you will walk away with images that genuinely convey the moods you’ve created together. Effective communication allows us to be sure that our intentions for each shoot are understood clearly by our models. When models are unsure or their direction is unclear, that hesitation and confusion can – and often does – show up in their expressions as a lack of conviction and commitment. The most compelling portraits tell the viewer a story, either about a moment in that person’s life or who they are (or in the case of models – who we want them to be in that frame). Conviction is the key to telling our stories and communication is the path through which we must travel with our models to get there.
Seeing our light
In a studio, our lighting situation is entirely under our control. When working outside of a studio environment, however, there are some key considerations to be made before we begin taking pictures. As an experienced photographer you will be instinctively watching for the direction of light and assessing your ambient light sources in relation to your models. Aside from reflectors and diffusers, introducing our own controlled light source(s) can further enhance our compositions. Peter and Jean, for example, regularly work with Rotolight continuous lighting units to create a blend of natural and artificial light that assists in giving their portraits a cinematic feel to them.
The benefit of working with a portable continuous light source is that it allows us to immediately see what effect our lighting is having on the subject and on the scene as we work. This is particularly useful when you’re working on location, where time can be extremely limited, because it removes the need for any guesswork or taking readings and repeatedly rearranging the lights in order to get the mix right.
Mood lighting
If our focus is on creating a moment, having continuous light sources ensures that everyone involved, including the model, can see the scene exactly as intended before firing a single frame. The latest units from Rotolight feature dials on the rear that allow us to adjust both colour temperature and power. They can then be placed strategically throughout our scene. The Rotolight NEO 2 LED light units are particularly useful when trying to create scenes, as they’re small enough to hide within a shot and spoof light sources. They can even be used to mimic a fireplace or television for example, using the unit’s CineSFX function, of which there are up to 12 in the NEO 2. Although this feature was originally conceived for video use, it can work fantastically well for photography scenarios as well.
Capturing moments with movement
Unless you’re shooting headshots or fine art images, introducing movement to your images adds a level of dynamic creativity that gives them impact. By movement we don’t mean shooting at slow shutter speeds and capturing motion. What we mean is using the comprehensive direction of our models as they perform during a shoot, rather than simply cycling through the process of pose > shoot > direct > repeat. When working with a model, Peter and Jean will explain in detail what they want their model to do within the scene, just like a film director would. They may even walk through the scene and actions alongside the model. Once everything is clear, the lights are set, Peter will literally call ‘action’ and as the model goes through the sequence he will continue to direct them verbally. Jean, on the other hand, tends to add music to further enhance the mood required for the shoot, such as playing rock music for a high- contrast/edgy look, for example.
As mentioned in the introduction, this technique may feel very alien to some, but the results can be quite transformative. Instead of capturing 20 frames of a similar pose or expression, we can walk away with a number of sequences that contain unique moments that cannot be replicated again. A further difference in the end result is that because our model is committed to the sequence and is genuinely going through it, rather than simply holding poses, we stand a better chance of capturing moments that feel authentic. That is what gives the pictures their impact.