A few days ago I posted some images from a recent editorial shoot that had clean and classic studio lighting. Here are some unretouched images from the light test I did the morning of that shoot to show the client a completely different direction we could take it. The client chose to go for the more classic lighting which totally makes sense because that is their market. But it was great they gave us the opportunity to play around a little and show them some other options.
My number one goal on a job is to make the client happy…… that means that sometimes I don’t get to shoot each job exactly the way I want. It’s just the reality of being a working photographer. But it’s fun to play around a bit when given the opportunity. After all, deep down we are all artists in the photography world no matter how commercial our work is, so having the opportunity to push the creativity is really satisfying.
That is why one of the best ways to develop as a photographer is by doing as many shoots just for yourself as possible. Test, test, test! Nick Onken wrote a great post about this subject on his ShopTalk blog. He calls it Always Be Shooting, or his ABS Philosophy. Also here is a great interview with Nick from Rob over at aphotoeditor.com I definitely need to adhere to this philosophy a little better, it’s tough to follow when you are busy with jobs. But more than ever it’s really the way to develop your career.
For you techies, the look in these images was created by using a mix of strobe and tungsten hot lights with a slow shutter speed. We were probably shooting around a 2 second shutter speed which captured the ghosted movement of the model in the tungsten lights, and then we would manually pop the strobes once or twice during that exposure to get that clearly frozen image.
