Where oh where are they hiding?

When I fell into the studio photography I never knew this side of working with models! I enjoyed the first session setup by my client and started looking around to work with other talented models. Never did I know that there was a whole other side of men and women out there looking to be photographed.

I never knew that people would give up their time to shoot for a few hours and not ask for anything in return other than a few images. Well, I do much more than that for them as they know. It is very hard work to model and to shoot a session as well. It's not like in a sporting event and the actions are totally out of your control. In sports, the hardest part is knowing where to be for the play to happen. In modeling sessions you have to direct each and every move and see things as they are or can be. This is very hard to learn. In a typical session, I will shoot between 700-1000 shots, one at a time. Yes, on the football field, you can just hold down the trigger and shoot 30 in about 10 seconds and fill up a memory card pretty fast. I a fashion shoot, its one shot at a time with total concentration. I sometimes get over heated from the pressure at hand. I don't need to go to the gym as I feel like I've done 300 pushup and squats at the end of a session.

So what is it that I enjoy about working with models? I really can't don't have a basic answer. I guess I enjoy working with people one on one and seeing what kind of art we can find during a session. I don't usually have a full blown plan of shots that I want to have. I treat it as a natural event. Yes, we have talked and we have some direction of the type of images we are trying for, but I then let the model choose where they want to go from there.
I have been criticized for working in this manner, but hey, everyone has a style and mine is to play it by ear. This past week, I shot with a wonderful model Cassie. We had planned out several ideas but then we came near the end of the session and we stumbled on something. It was perfect and the images are outstanding!

So where are they hiding huh? Well, that really means where is the next fantastic model hiding and the fantastic shots that go with them. Stay tuned!