Welcome back to my monthly Behind the Camera where I pick a topic and start typing away. This month’s topic has been rather hard to decide on, even though I have potential topics lined up for the rest of the year. The vast majority of them are in lines with what I’ve been discussing here lately and are designed to make you think about being a better photographer. They are great topics, and all based on my experiences over the past year or so. However, none of them really spoke to me in a way that I would be able to write about them the way that I envisioned. Picture a pep talk where the coach is going through all kinds of negative stuff in their own life and just can’t quite get the game face going. It wouldn’t feel authentic, and I didn’t want what I was saying to come across in that way. I know that my energy comes through on these pages and I needed a topic that fit the energy, but I had none in the list. I guess this is the byproduct of coming up with topics when things are easy and exciting with photography. The truth is, not everything is unicorns and rainbows, especially in a creative space.
This brings me to the dilemma that I am currently facing. What to write about? I thought about doing a quick update as far as what I’ve been up to lately, but that would get a little involved as there has been a lot of little photographic projects going on since last we spoke. Again, I would not be able to do them justice because I’m just not in the right headspace to revel in that creativity. You could say that I might just be a passenger on the long-distance struggle bus. I’ve been going through this for nearly two months now, and I figured I might as well share that with you here today.
I’ve always tried to be very open about what is going on with my photography and have talked about both the good and the bad times at length. I even made a Behind the Camera dealing with the Ebbs and Flows of photography. This is a fact of life for any creative and for the longest time I was on cloud nine with the ability to see beauty everywhere and be able to capture it almost without thinking. Over the last two months or so, that has been ebbing quite a bit and that funk that I knew would happen has found me. It is a difficult place to be in when you know you should be out with the camera, but there is not much you can do when it hits. I’ve learned that this is a normal part of the cycle and usually means that great things are just on the horizon. It still doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when you are in the middle of a stretch where you really wonder if you were ever any good at all.
As I look back over my more recent blog entries, I can tell when the momentum started to slip. It was around the end of April when I was at Doughton Park. That trek was a shift from my decay work into landscape photos and it didn’t go particularly easy. I managed to work through it and was preparing for an upcoming mentoring session at the same time. Things just really weren’t clicking with me though, and I found getting the compositions a bit harder than I thought they should have been. The same could have been said a few days earlier when I went to Cone Manor as I was also having some difficulties there, but not to the same degree. I blamed most of that on the fact that the fog didn’t materialize as expected, but looking back on it, I imagine that my creative energy was actually starting to fail.
Why was I going through these difficulties after what can only be described as an epic stretch of time where I was on top of my game and seemed to be producing new photographs exponentially faster than ever before? Well, it goes back to the ebbs and flows concept. The longer things are good and productive, the longer the down time should be expected to be. I had mentioned many times over the previous months that I knew that a downturn was just on the horizon, I just didn’t know when it would happen. Since the end of April, I do believe that the downturn has arrived, but was there something that sparked it?
Spring is usually the time when photographers go crazy and dust off their cameras after a season of cold and blah. I’m the opposite as I love working in the Winter months and that is the best time for the decay end of my photography. I’ve really been enjoying it and enjoying it to the point that even at the beach where I was aiming to get some coastal landscapes, I ended up shooting decay photos. With the change of the seasons, my mind tried to shift to more landscape images, but I wasn’t feeling it the way I had in the past. Add to that, we have had an incredibly wet Spring here in the foothills which has limited my ability to get out with the camera. It is also the time when I have three details to do on the vehicles which take about 10+ hours to do on each. The added time spent on the yard now that the grass is growing very quickly adds to that, as does the upcoming services on all of the cars. There has also been the fact that this website needs an overhaul and I’ve been working on putting that together since May. There is the ongoing weekly video that I have committed to which has taken time and effort to put together. In short, there has been a lot pulling my attention away from the creative aspects of my photography. As I’ve mentioned before, stress can come from having a lot on your “to do” list and if that is the case then there is probably a reason that you don’t have time to think about your art. That was the case here, just too many things that had to happen which mostly had to work around the dry days, here and there, which added to the stress.
In addition to everything else, Toni and I had planned a trip to Charleston, SC, for the middle of June. This threw a wrench into the detail schedule on Toni’s car since she wanted it done upon our return while it would normally have happened at the end of May when the pollen slowed down. I also needed to make sure that all the things that could be done were done before we left. Part of the scheduling issues came into play because of photography. I’ve actually had a good bit going on with photography during this time even though you haven’t seen blog entries from it. As I mentioned, I have been doing the weekly Tuesday’s Tips on YouTube which takes more time than you might think that it does. In fact, I am typing this entry out on a Sunday, knowing that I haven’t recorded my next video yet which will need to be done either today or tomorrow.
During the first week of May, I also had a headshot session in Charlotte with one of my corporate clients which took a day to pack up for, and a day to shoot and edit. I don’t count these sessions as particularly creative, but they do require thought and preparation, not to mention storing up enough energy to talk to the different people. The struggle is real as an introvert when it comes to interacting with people. It isn’t that I don’t like it, in fact I enjoy being around people, but it does drain me.
One of the things that I realized while doing the headshots is that it had been quite a white since I’ve done any people photography. In fact, the last time I had a portrait shoot of any type was in October which was a very fun outside themed session. I had actually done two shoots back-to-back during that time and had been expecting a third, but more on that in a minute. It seemed that my people photography just stopped at that point which did allow me to get back to doing a lot of my decay work. While I was thankful for that, there was a lot of muscle memory that was being lost in doing portraiture which I had to pick back up again with a quickness for the headshots. Fortunately, those went very well, but I could tell that I needed to get back in the saddle once again with people.
Around this time, Toni had the idea for a quick test shoot session which would give me the ability to do some creative work in the studio once again which I was missing. I jumped on the chance and put together a set that fit the vibe she was after. She was looking to wear her blonde wig and an outfit that she rarely wears. That got the wheels spinning on putting together a set for her session which was harder than I would have thought. This was because I was very much out of practice in set design, but I got it built and a lighting recipe put together in about a day’s time.
The shoot went very well, and we ended up with some really strong photos that even Toni liked. This says a lot considering she doesn’t like photos of herself and doesn’t really like being in front of the camera. She does a great job when she does it through and I am very grateful for the experience. It was the first time in a while I had done this type of photography and I had the chance to do some different things with the edits than I have done in the recent past. Even with the headshots, I just went with the same basic edits that I had done with the previous sessions for the company so that they would all look uniform. Toni’s session brought a bit of a creative vibe to the edits and I had the ability to do anything that I wanted since it was just a test shoot. The whole experience got me pumped to do more with portraiture, especially since it had been so long for me.
It was in the early part of May that I had realized that I was needing some refresher shoots and I started reaching out for some tfp (trade for picture) opportunities to allow me to get my skills back to where I thought they should be and to add to my portfolio. One of the ways I tried to contact subjects was through Facebook and answered several posts with folks looking for photographers. One of them was done by a photographer looking for branding photos for her business, Serene Snaps. She was offering a trade of branding sessions, but I wasn’t in need of those photos for myself. I just simply said that if she would allow me to use the photos I shot, I would be happy to do a session for her, to which she agreed.
We scheduled the session shortly after I finished up with Toni’s photos and planned on doing it at Wiseman’s View at the Linville Gorge. It was my first attempt at a branding session and I used it to learn all that I could about the style of photography. We spent about two hours in several locations to get a lot of photos put together for her use. Normally a branding session would just be a handful of photos, but we ended up with something like 30 edited photos. I used it as a learning experience and that meant that the more the better when it came to editing. The session was very beneficial for me as I learned a lot about angles and some creative compositions to incorporate her own photography into the photos. She really liked the end results which was all that really mattered.
When I was done with the edits on that session, I was starting to feel more comfortable with portraiture again. I had stretched myself both in the studio as well as in the field. I had edited more than 60 photos in a very short amount of time and my editing routine for people was coming back to me once again. Of course, this pulled me away from doing my normal landscape and decay work, but I knew that it was for the best because a large part of my business is now built up around doing portraiture and that is not a skill that I want to dwindle away.
I had the chance to go back to my landscape roots during a mentoring session that I had been preparing for at the end of April. This was an opportunity to look at the landscape in its Springtime form from a photographic standpoint. Granted, I wasn’t looking for my own photos, but it always does me good to get out with other photographers to help them see what they are hoping to photograph. I was able to get a few of my photos during the day and I really liked how they turned out, but it wasn’t the main focus for me. My photos were more or less a demonstration of the concepts that I had been discussing with Joe. None of that really mattered though because I really thought that this was going to be the tipping point where I was able to get back on the horse and get back to doing photography once again the way that I had been for so long before.
Sadly, that wasn’t the case. The weather wasn’t great, I was tied up at home doing chores that had been put off for way too long, and just recovering from several days of doing edits for both my photos and for clients. There were also a few mentoring emails that had to be put together for some image critiques that I was working on. Things kind of slowed to a halt, and then there was one other portrait shoot that was to take place on Memorial Day weekend which turned into an event and a half. In fact, I lost nine days for that shoot because of how involved I became with it.
This shoot actually started in the planning stages back in October of last year. I was fresh off of doing a comp card session for an up-and-coming model as well as the themed Halloween Shoot which made me feel like I actually knew what I was doing behind the camera. I started to look for other new models to work with so that I could do similar sessions. I found two of them, one on Facebook, and one on Instagram. The Facebook one fizzled out and I never really got anywhere there. It was Michelle that I talked to through Instagram which started to get some traction. She is an established model in Charlotte and one that I had been following since she shot with a photographer Michael Hull who I met one day at Doughton Park. I had reached out to her to see if there were any models that were trying to build portfolios that I might be able to work with. It is these newer models that are typically looking for the trade sessions and they wouldn’t hold me to quite as high a standard since they were just getting started. I really didn’t think that I could afford to hire Michelle since she stays pretty booked it seems. I was just hoping that she had some connections with others that I could possibly help out. I was surprised when she sounded willing to collaborate with me and do a tfp (trade for photos) session. This was fantastic, and something that I was really excited about…at the time.
Essentially, she was needing something for her portfolio that wasn’t based in swimwear or lingerie and was wondering if I would be willing to work with a couple of elegant dresses that she had but didn’t have many photos of in her collection. That was no problem at all, I was happy to shoot whatever she wanted because I needed the practice and experience doing different things. She sent me pictures of the two dresses that she wanted in the shoot and suggested that she would like a flower theme. There were some moodboard photos that she sent over as well to help me get ideas. I started building up set ideas and began to source the things that I needed. The plan was to get the shoot done during the winter in her slow time, but things kept falling through the cracks.
The funny thing was, with each delay and each time I thought that it wasn’t going to happen I became more and more relieved. I was really concerned that I wasn’t going to be able to produce the type of photos that she was after or even used to having worked with some very high-end photographers in that field. I have some serious bouts of imposter syndrome far too often, and this was a new venue that I was venturing into which made it worse. She would get busy, and the communication would stop for a while, and I never wanted to push since she was being very giving with her free time to help me out. Just the fact that she was willing to drive a couple of hours from home to get here was enough to put pressure on me to deliver. I did continue working to get the set put together with a backdrop, floor spray, curtains, flowers, baskets, and some fabric bits to add to the props that I already had. There was more of an investment in this stuff than I wanted to think about, but it did open the doors for some different types of portrait photography just by having the bits and pieces that I was collecting. This made the investment worthwhile in my opinion.
As winter came to an end, I had all but forgotten about doing the shoot with Michelle and was honestly fine with it. I hadn’t done anything with portraiture for a while and was feeling rusty to say the least. I would probably fall on my face if she came out here for a session, and I would much rather just skip that experience and embarrassment altogether. However, she did reach back out in early spring, and we started talking again. I let her know about my concerns and where my limitations were. She was the consummate professional and put those concerns to ease and said that she would be able to help with a lot of the areas that I was concerned with during the shoot. I had always heard that hiring a model was a great thing for just that reason. I just hated to put that on her when I was doing the shoot for free.
Eventually, we got our schedules to come together and decided on the Sunday during Memorial Day weekend to make it happen. I was excited, anxious, and scared to death leading up to this and honestly hoped that she would back out. There is something intimidating about having someone in front of your camera that potentially knows more about how things are supposed to go than you do. I was playing out horror stories in my head about how this was going to go, which pretty much enveloped all of my creative energies and kept me from focusing on any other photographic endeavors.
On the Friday before the shoot, I spent the day putting the set together with everything that I had cobbled together over the previous months. It took the better part of the afternoon to get it all set up and the fabrics steamed since they were new and wrinkled. Saturday was all about getting the lights positioned with the modifiers chosen. Then I got a rough balance between the lights for the look that I was after. There was a lot riding on this shoot, and I wanted to make it as great as possible. By the time that I went upstairs on Saturday evening, I was convinced that I had it all figured out and was set for the session.
Sunday morning proved that was a lie because I started in first off by changing the lighting around and even altered some of the elements on the set. I tend to do this every time as I try to get things all ironed out before the client shows up. During this time, I got a message from Michelle that she was running a bit late which was fine. I was really happy that she let me know, although I was still kind of hoping that she would cancel. I was starting to get visions of colossal failures during this shoot and it would all fall on me because she knew what she was doing. I was still trying to learn the craft at the level that I wanted to be working at. The pressure was all on me, and I didn’t like that one bit.
No matter what I was thinking, the train was coming for me, and Michelle arrived when she said that she would. She still needed to get into wardrobe, but her hair and makeup were all done and looked great. She got changed as I got the lights turned on and made the final preparations for the session. It was kind of a slow start on my end because I could tell that she worked at a faster pace than I was used to. This was great as I had to spend much less time working through the posing, and I had more time to get the shots as they happened. The rhythm was eventually there, and we worked very well together once I was able to match her speed. She would make alterations to the set that really worked out well, and just nailed her poses every time.
I even finally felt comfortable enough with the whole process that I remembered that I had a filter in my bag that I’ve had for a year but never used. The Singh-Ray Tony Sweet Soft Ray filter is a soft-focus filter that I have been really wanting to try out. It was designed as a landscape filter, but I saw the potential as a portrait filter. I had just never thought to use it because I was so tied up in getting poses and lighting right, but now that Michelle was taking care of the posing end, I was able to try some creative things which made this a lot more fun as well as giving us both more options when it came to the photos that resulted. The results speak for themselves with this filter, and it is one that I bet I won’t forget using the next time.
I became so involved in the shooting and having such a good time, that I didn’t even hear when the music stopped. I had a CD playing just to give Michelle some something to listen to, but I had to keep the volume low because she was very soft spoken and I didn’t want to miss anything that she said. I don’t think that either of us missed the music when it stopped playing which is a good thing as I think we were both fully committed to the photos. My intention was to get about a half dozen or so photos for Michelle to use in her portfolio, but after about an hour, I had shot several hundred frames and from the looks of them, they were all fantastic. My worries were pretty much put to rest, and I found that I didn’t even have to review the images after I would do a series of shots. I would just break occasionally and look to see what we had when it looked like she needed a minute to reset. It was amazing at how communicative she could be without needing to verbalize that she needed a break, just to reset her muscles. Maybe it was all the learning that I had been doing to prepare myself for working with a model that I knew what to look for. Whatever the case, I felt that we were on the same page for most of the shoot once we got to know each other.
I think it was just over an hour and I asked if she had time to move to another set that I had created almost as an afterthought the day before. I knew that the original set was kind of going to be limiting because it was built with a single type of photo in mind. I wanted an option to move to in order to bring in a little bit of variety, and I wanted it to be a very flexible space. What I came up with was a very similar background to what I had used with Toni’s last session, but it was a bit smaller so that it would fit on the smaller background stand as I had my two large ones tied up with the main set. The floor was just done by draping black muslin on the floor for a very simple setting that could make for a black and white photo, or even a color photo with some color added in post or by gel at the time of capture. No matter what I wanted to do, this set would give me the bones to get it started.
Michelle was gracious enough to agree to move to the other set and she wanted to change her wardrobe. Originally, there had been plans for a lavender dress with a slightly different look than the first one, but she was wanting to do a different dress now. I had no problem with whatever she wanted to wear but asked what the dress looked like so I could get the lights done in a fitting way. My original plan was to bring in hard light which I thought would work with her facial structure quite well, but the dress option that she was wanting to do was this soft and flowing outfit that she had picked up for ten bucks at Goodwill shortly before the session. It was a great dress and I could see all kinds of potential in it right from the start. It would not have worked with hard light though, so I kept the soft light theme and with a different setup than the original lighting arrangement. I wanted this to be more beauty lighting with strip boxes on either side and an umbrella set up in the middle for some fill. That would allow for a bit of flexibility in the posing.
With that Michelle was off and running and made this dress into a prop as she worked the fabric around like an accessory. There had been no time to plan for this outfit, or what vibe we were going for, so I just kept rolling with the elegant theme that she had been interested in from the beginning. I learned quickly that I loved working with this minimal set much more than I liked the very element-rich set we had just moved from. There was something freeing with having Michelle as the only aspect that I needed to worry with when it came to compositions. This was one of the things that I wanted to figure out about myself by doing this session and it was working quite well. I was learning more about myself as a portrait photographer and what I preferred to capture.
To add a little flare to the set, we decided that my $7 thrift store chair would add just the right element to the scene. While doing the edits, I found that black and white worked particularly well with this set and the dress. There were a number of photos that were done as black and white because of how good this presentation looked. Michelle and I hadn’t talked about her preference in that regard before, but I felt that with the large number of photos that were turning out as keepers, I could sneak in a few black and white ones without a problem.
Something that I found out that I really enjoyed about this part of the session was that the combination of the dress, background, and even the chair created the opportunity to not only go black and white, but also to play around with the colors in general as I found different color relationships to focus on. The dress was a very pale pink which I found gave me the option to go with a white look, or really pull in more of the pink tones. I could even color the corset differently than the dress for a bit more contrast. There was quite literally no end to what I could do with this combination of elements. I could even affect the background color since it was just a basic gray tone. Something else that I found out that I could do here was use one of my favorite color profiles that is usually reserved for my old car photos, but it allowed me to build up the colors from a very desaturated place for a slightly different look.
While I was shooting, I used two different lenses as well as the soft-focus filter to give me quite a number of options to pull from when it came time to edit, but I think that when it was all said and done, it was the simple black and white photos that won my heart. I just couldn’t get over the directness of the presentation and these really seemed to capture the essence of Michelle. If you look through her body of work, she does a lot of fitness and fashion inspired looks which just wasn’t what we were after for this session. The reason that she chose to work with me was because I was happy to work more on the elegant side of things which she felt her portfolio was lacking in. As I was going through all of these photos, they were unlike anything that I had seen from her before. I was afraid that this might happen, but I had been focusing on the fact that my photos wouldn’t be as good as the other photographers that had worked with her. I never stopped to think that it might just be that different was exactly what she was looking for. These photos all have a very fine art vibe to them which is the kind of portraiture that I really want to specialize in. Doing the run and gun click sessions doesn’t appeal to me all that much. It is these types of photos that I am really interested in capturing with my camera, and I learned a lot about how to do that in my time with Michelle.
There were nearly 600 images on my camera when our time came to a close. She had spent 2.5 hours with me which was incredible, and I will forever be thankful for that time. We had agreed on a couple of hours and I really wanted to be respectful of her time, but I think that we were both having a good time and the extra minutes didn’t cause any grief at all. Over the next three days, I spent every available moment at the computer working on the edits. There turned out to be 75 photos from this session that were edited and delivered to Michelle. Looking back on the experience, I can say without a doubt that it was the most intense experience that I have had with photography. That was punctuated when I mowed the yard after I finally got all the photos finished and uploaded. I remember thinking that I had just mowed, but the grass was very tall. I looked back at the calendar and saw that nine days had passed since I had mowed, yet it seemed like only yesterday that I had been doing it last. I had been so wrapped up in this photo session I had essentially lost nine days from finalizing the concept in my head, building the set, setting the lights, doing the shoot, and editing the photos.
That nine days put me behind on so many other things that I was now under the gun to get things done before our trip to Charleston. Part of that was spent getting the Miata inspected, registered, a full fluid change service done, and a full spring detail. All of that was spread over like five more days but it all got done. By the time that it was time to go on our trip, I was exhausted. I hadn’t done anything with the camera since Michelle’s session and was still quite exhausted from doing four rather involved photo shoots where I had about 150 edited photos to work through. I had gotten very proficient at editing portrait photos but was now feeling more detached than ever from my landscape and decay work. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do that kind of photography. Quite the contrary actually. I was wanting to, but just didn’t have the mental energy to make it happen, and it felt like the creative energy was pretty much all drained out. I’m used to this happening after a particularly good trek happens, and I find it hard to start up again because I feel like I’ve reached the pinnacle and everything else will be downhill.
With everything working against me being able to concentrate on the next trek, I decided to not fight it and just let the inspiration hit when it decided to. This meant going on the trip without any real planning and having nothing in mind of what I wanted to capture. This was far from ideal, but it was a gamble that I was going to have to face. There was no time before we left to try and get out with the camera to break the funk.
I had a very hard time during the week finding my creative footing. I just wasn’t interested in photographing anything at all. Toni would even try to point things out to me, but nothing was hitting at all. I was pretty much in a place where I had decided that the camera was probably not going to leave the bag and was fine with that. It wasn’t until that next to last full day where I was able to get a little bit of photography done. It was a struggle to get the compositions figured out and to really decide why I was taking the photos, but I eventually got some frames that I kind of liked. These were nothing special at all, but I really think that it was because I wasn’t able to connect to the environment. It just seemed like an uphill battle to get the photos sorted out. That feeling only slightly faded when I was editing the photos after we got home.
There are times with the camera when everything is simple and fluid. I could just point in any direction and get something that I really love. Those are the times when I love being a photographer and it is just second nature to me. There is another side to that coin though, the one where photography is still a struggle. I’ve been there for a while now and everything that I have been doing has seemed like way more effort than it is worth, or that I’m used to at least. I don’t think that the photos are bad, just the experience is not what I have come to expect. Actually, I think that the photos that I’ve been making have been very strong and have turned out much better than I had anticipated. I mean, I was over the moon after Michelle’s session, but even that wasn’t enough to put me in the right headspace. It just cemented the fact that I can still produce solid work when I am not completely there mentally. This is a great quality for a professional photographer to have and I’m very fortunate that I can work through these times. I just really want to have that inner drive and the want to create images back in my life again.
I know that those days will return and the part that I’m really waiting on is what I have come to expect from these extended periods of doldrums. Typically, what happens is I look back over my work and find what I think are the best examples and wonder if I’ll ever do any better. I’ll look at the majority of my body of work and think that it is all junk. During this thought process, a change will happen in my mind, and I’ll get that creative urge again, but it is specifically directed at doing something much better than I have done before. These are the times when I grow as a creative and you can usually see a big change in my work after an extended pause in my photography. Of course, I can’t guarantee that this will happen, but I know that in the past the longer I don’t feel like creating, the more impressive the return is likely to be.
I hope that reading through this month’s Behind the Camera hasn’t brought anyone down, or gave the impression that things are not going well overall. The reality of life for a creative is that there are times that it comes easy, and there are times that it just doesn’t. Currently, things are on that more difficult side of the spectrum which I know will pass eventually. The good news is my most recent client shoot was a session with two classic cars (a ’57 Chevy 210 and a ’66 Chevy stepside). It was well over 90 degrees, and I shot the entire session in the full sun which you know I don’t like to do. I’m in the process of revealing the images to the clients, so I am not quite ready to share any here just yet, but I ended up with 39 edited images from the day. I really liked how they turned out, but I also was keenly aware that there was a creative disconnect for the entire shoot. I was working less on instinct and more on conscious thought which again is the true test of a professional in my opinion. Moments like this tell me that I am still able to do this photography thing, and I do still get an immense amount of enjoyment out of it. The time will come when I am one with the camera again and everything will just happen organically without any conscious thought. Until that time, it is very comforting to know that I can still produce strong images no matter what the assignment.
