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When I first started to pick up photography back in high school, my teacher, Ms. Hernandez, proposed an idea that stuck with me. More so, that this lesson had influenced this conscious way I approach a personal project or even a commissioned set for someone. All she had to do was simply placing an empty glass bottle of Coca Cola on her desk.
Looking back up at the class, she said something along the lines of, “as a photographer, you have to be able to look at this Coke bottle, and you have to figure out how to capture it in a way that no one has seen before.” Those were her only instructions, and I feel like this has been sort of a life long assignment that never ends for a photographer.
Years later, Hernandez’s challenge had been ingrained in my workflow that I’m constantly trying to look for different ways that I can present content that others haven’t seen before. I believe that, especially on social media, several photographers and influencers emulate a similar voice to one another that it’s hard to distinguish a sense of authorship amongst these photos. Most of them use similar presets or compose their images in the same way, and like most art, it becomes a genre in and of itself since these photos are bound by a growingly standardized set of rules. It’s not so much a contest where I’m pitted against other people, so to speak, but more of an inner exploration in what I’m capable of doing, and going even beyond that.
I, myself, find that I’m guilty of this from time to time. It’s easy to start taking photos from a place I’m familiar with. Yet, what I try to do, is that I try to then bend the rules ever so slightly so that I can attempt to have my photos look different enough with my own voice in the mix.
I had always been fascinated with how light can influence an image’s narrative. Play with it long enough, and you can have hyper-emotive poses based on the contrast between your highlights and shadows. Add the dimension of color, which adds a bit of complex textures into the mix, and it practically changes the entire attitude of the piece.
After doing some research for different ideas, I came across photos that utilized a projector to light their subjects while also adding deeper context based on the images they projected upon them. This idea of not only lighting them in this intense pop-like manner, but to also manipulate the colors shown across them was something I hadn’t considered.
Gilanne is one of my friends that I know will be willing to do a photoshoot, no matter how spontaneous my ideas are. After doing a test run on my own self portraits (you can see it on Instagram), I had an idea more or less of how the light from the projector would influence the subject’s pose.
Move too far away, and you instantly lose light, posing your subject has to be very calculated to get the right amount of light on them. After settling on a few backdrops, I found that shining just plain colored backgrounds are way more flattering than say a painting or what not. It tends to look too busy on the subject, so instead, settling on simpler patterns allows one to play in that space a little more.
On the white background, especially, I wanted to emulate these intensely lit Japanese fashion ads, that has a very pop energy to it. For my direction to Gilanne, I wanted to emphasize her beauty by allowing her to just merely “flirt” with the space to give her this sense of confidence in the final images. After instructing her on a pose she felt comfortable with, with that idea, she then naturally fell into the space on her own and I didn’t have to guide her anymore beyond that.
Upon final review of this session, I had a better grasp of how this particular light source can paint over the subject, but there are definitely different ways I can go about achieving the same sort of lighting, with more control in its quality as well. For what it’s worth, it was a fun personal project with one of my closest friends, and hopefully this experience can help guide more shoots to come.