Haley contacted me to a photo shoot recently. I grab my friend Deshae and we drove down to Hollywood, Maryland and shot at one of the oldest farms in the state.
It was extremely windy this day and it was hard to hold the reflector. We managed but it was physically hard at certain parts of the day.
From time to time, I will get asked to test shoots with potential models and I have to admit its something I really enjoy doing. Often times the subject comes to me a little nervous or unsure what to bring, wear or what to do. Honestly, I just tell them to be themselves. This is a learning experience for the both of us. I love doing it because I can tell the range of the talent the model has in a stress free environment. I go into the shoot not expecting anything and I promise the subject if you let go and relax so will I. I feed off your energy just as much as you feed of mine.
In my head this is a nervous model, lol.
These two ladies are best friends and Jasmine (without glasses) has been considering modeling and got approached by a couple of photographers, but wasn't sure if it was for her. I could hear the passion in her voice and the eagerness to see what she could do so I told I had some free on Monday and that we could just do something for 2 or 3 hours. I told her to feel free to bring her best friend Jazmine (with glasses) with her.
I decided to test out a technique that I learned from fellow colleague and friend Bryce Chapman. His headshots and portraits are really amazing. I figured I give it a try (after I got his blessing to do it), he gave me the recipe to do it. The ladies were eager to give it a try and granted the technique isn't that hard I feel the need to still perfect it.
In my opinion, it looks good, but I still need to perfect it. More practice in due time. Now for Jasmine I had her to do 10 Shotz with me. With this technique it requires the model to have to change her expression and pose every time the camera shutter closes with no direction from me or anyone else. I tell them if I don't press the shutters it because I have already seen that pose and something else needs to happen. As easy as it sounds, quite a few people can't do it. Not that is not a insult, it just teaches if you want to model you should have your go to poses/expression and be more self aware of yourself physical more than ever. Not many people can do it on there first try. So, in some situations I will offer ideas. (yea I am cheating)
"Yea...I know I am a an enigma..."
Post production after a test shoot is always fun because it allows me to play with custom filters, layers, etc in photoshop to my heart's content. With these I can go as subtle or as far left extreme as I want to.
The last thing I had the ladies do was me giving them an opportunity to be apart of my project that I am hoping to finish before the end of the year. It's quite a large order for what I am doing and the images created are apart of a larger final product. So, I will share a few images from this part of the shoot.
At the end of the day, I love shoots like this often. It gives me the opportunity to really be creative and hopefully allow the model to relax and enjoy the experience. Thanks for reading and please leave comments!!
- Jason
