Welcome to my little photographic adventure of fulfilling a Photographic brief – Daily life

Hi everyone!

The creative process for photoshoots was always such a weird experience for me.

The work that I got would come from a couple of different sources:
❀ Models who wanted to update their portfolio
❀ Stylists or designers that wanted shots of their clothes/products
❀ Make up artists who needed portfolio shots of their makeup
❀ People running an event that wanted it captured (conference, engagement, etc)

The events were the easiest… but most exhausting. Often it was 8-12 hours of running around and either trying to be a total ninja and not be noticed, or herding people into specific shots (a wedding for example is so much herding of family and friends).

On second thoughts, makeup artists were the easiest… blank white background, subtle light, close head shot.

Models would either have a very specific idea they wanted to create, or they’d basically just ask me for photos to update their portfolio and I would have to create a whole look or image that they’d be happy with.

This one time…
Once though, I was asked simply for; an image of women in their underwear in their daily life.
I think it was for a magazine or blog post, but I never really had something so open-ended, but also not really open-ended as well.

Since it was an unusual request, I had the bright idea of basically asking my models to ignore me and just muck around. That was weird in itself, usually I’m completely directing the models, or if not me, it’s a creative director or stylist or makeup artist directing the models.
This time I would set the scene, and then asked them to just… interact.

It was tough, the models really didn’t know what to do, and hadn’t met each other before and were just a bit flummoxed. They kept holding poses instead of just being… and in their defense, it’s so much easier to take a good photo with good lighting when people aren’t moving around.

Luckily the model on the far left of the top photo (in the blue singlet) took charge, made suggestions and then told the others hilarious stories… it was amazing and the other models loosened up instantly.

I buzzed around changing lights and constantly clicking my camera, but they totally focused on each other and had a great time.

I’d create a set for them, and then give them a general idea, and they’d run with it. The photo above was my idea, and I don’t think it really worked as a shot… I just wasn’t exactly sure what the client wanted, so I wanted to give them a range.

The model on the far right (or the kitchen shot) was very new to modeling, was quite shy and had never modeled with other models in the same shot before, but the other girl got her involved and told her stories and made her laugh and they all got some great shots.

The client had said the only needed one shot, but they actually ended up using two of the photos above, the very top kitchen one was their favourite, but they used the makeup one as well.

I’m so glad it had worked out… in hindsight it might have been less stilted at the start if I had used models I had already worked with, but then, these models turned out to be so charming that I am actually really happy with the results, especially that first shot.

Hope you liked this little look instead the weird creative process of my Photographic brief – Daily life adventure.

Here are a couple of my other photographic posts if you’re interested:
Songs of fire and ice..
A water-based photography assignment

Thanks so much for reading! Please hit me on Twitter if you want to talk about it…

Sources: All photos taken by me on a Canon 1D.