testing and shooting for the portfolio

I’m surrounded by my own photographs all day long and sometimes I take them for granted. In the world of business it can feel like you’re only as good as your last image and then it’s time to move on to the next. But lately I’ve been taking time to look back a bit more at some of the photos we’ve created at Daylight Photo. Readers have told me they like to hear the stories associated with particular photos or jobs so I’d like to share some thoughts on a particular group of photos today. The videos here on prophotolife address technical subjects so this will be more about the thoughts associated with creating this photography instead of the technical details.

The photographs pictured here were done for our studio portfolio in 2006. We’re always testing new concepts and new styles for our work, trying different things to see what works best. In addition to creating some nice new photos, portfolio shoots are also designed to let us troubleshoot a process in order to make it more efficient. Clients do have time and budget considerations in addition to needing great looking photography and we try to take that into consideration, too.

The major credit for these images goes to Julia (aka “Julio”) for the incredible work she did with styling. Julio is a wonderful stylist who I’ve worked with off and on for almost twenty years. This series all started with a conversation and a desire we shared to show clothing in a new way. Here were our goals going in:

1. show clothing in a new and exciting way
2. include movement
3. do the above without using models

Let’s cut right to what I feel is the most incredible part of these photos. Hardly any image retouching was done. One metal post was taken out of the full length photos and the necklace and purse were stripped into the dress shot. Other than that there was only minor cleanup done to threads and buttons. There really was no post-production “magic”.

When Julia and I first worked together years ago there were no digital images or digital post-production. Everything we shot was on 4″ x 5″ or 8″ x 10″ transparency film with a view camera. So when it came time to tackle this, that’s the approach we took. “Back in the day” we had to previsualize and take a methodical approach to getting it right the first time, with maybe the aid of a few Polaroids for testing.

The implied movement Julio created with this clothing involved hours of rigging with wire, foam padding and fishing line. We started with a basic metal form and Julio built a person’s outline, clothed it and then filled it in. Really, what she accomplished is worthy of any gallery.

As a fashion design graduate, Julio knows fabric and how clothing is made. She would look at the cut of an arm, and would tell me exactly how it would best be laid, in just the same way I knew where the light should be placed. She could discuss any fabric, the fashion designers that probably influenced the clothing we were photographing and how a men’s jacket is cut for a perfect drape.

I brought out the textures and flow of the clothing by lighting angles carefully. The movement, the edge blur on the clothing, was all done in-camera using a combination of strobe and tungsten lighting (yes, it’s a great subject for a video and we’ll try to get to it in the future). So we really kicked it old-school on this one, putting our tactile, hands-on skills to the test.

One of my first jobs in photography was working in a catalog photography studio, alongside 6 or 7 other photographers. There were stylists, assistants, set builders, art directors and merchandisers right there on the staff of 30-plus people. It was there that I first worked with Julia. To be honest, many of those people are out of the photography business now. Photography is done faster and cheaper now and the prop makers, set builders and stylists have been largely replaced by the capabilities of the retouching computer. Julio, in fact, is no longer styling after being in the business for thirty years. This mid-sized midwestern market, it seems, can no longer support someone with her knowledge and particular specialties. Time marches on and computers and technology are now the preferred approach.

So what were the results of the portfolio shoot? Well, we’re all very happy with the images. Has it led to more work? Well, we’ve seen clients that are excited by the possibilities but they “don’t quite have the budget” for something with this much hand work. Can we do something like it, they ask, but less expensively…maybe do some of it in Photoshop? No, not really. It takes a special talent to style the clothing, we tell them, and that takes a certain amount of time and money. I don’t know any way around it.