In preparation for the photo shoot for an advertisement campaign of a local dance school, I set up a shared Pinterest board, where the director of the school, my wife and I pinned photographs with ideas on the poses, lighting and makeup. The basic concept for the ad campaign is to show a child in dance attire, surrounded by a group of children in everyday clothes, to convey that some kids “stand out of the crowd” because of their interest in dancing. Personally, I like this idea, because I can relate to it as a parent. My daughter has been drawn to images of dance since she was about 1.5 years old – before she could actually dance. We first noticed that she was completely immersed in a “Tales of Beatrix Potter” ballet shown on screen in the gift shop of the Palais Garner in Paris.
While the general theme of the ad campaign is well-defined, coming up with a shoot list is somewhat challenging, as it needs to address the expectations of the clients (there are two school co-owmes, who have complementary, i.e. slightly different, ideas for the key shots), my own ideas, and logistical constraints. As we began planning the shoot couple of weeks ago, it became apparent, that shooting with a group of 3 -8 year-olds on location (as we originally wanted) would be beyond what we could attempt within the given timeframe and budget. Thus, our posing and lighting ideas naturally narrowed down to ones that would work in a studio.
I find that inviting clients to share their ideas with me before the shoot is tremendously helpful, not only because it gives me a better opportunity to address their needs (after all, this kind of photography is part art and part service), but also because it helps them refine their own ideas of photos they would like to have. This doesn’t mean that they have to find and pin the exact shot they like – the idea of their ideal photo can be a combination of various aspects (lighting, pose, costume, etc.) of other images, or it can even form by means of eliminating what they don’t like.
Having a collection (“board” in Pinterest terms) of the images that contain elements that I want to capture/replicate in the shoot also allows me to show it to the models (say, on an iPad), which saves enormous amount of time and effort at the posing stage. This is particularly helpful with amateur models, who, unlike pros, do not have a readily accessible arsenal of poses that they could repeatably produce.
The more my photo projects shift towards people photography, the more I find that involving other people as early as possible, as well as throughout the project, enables an enormous improvement of the quality of the final product and of the experience of the shoot itself. It is as if the creative and technical tasks become distributed among a team of people, who are very motivated and bring a variety of perspectives to the project.