Drama and Movement

I am back :) After a lazy pause dealing with the tons of photos I took during the Xmas break and the first 2 weeks of Jan..

Ok ok no excuses!

In my fashion photos images (well, in all my photos, but let’s stay in the fashion realm), I like geometry and shapes as I have mentioned in an earlier post. But another element I really like is drama. Drama makes a photo more interesting to me.

There are various ways to add drama to a photo. Drama can be achieved with the right expressions, poses, make up / hair, styling, location and lightning. Another way of injecting drama is movement.

If you plan to add movement, there are a few decisions that you will need to make that come with some challenges attached to them…

First of all, do you want to freeze the movement or not? – do you want to freeze the action and see the model “sharp” or do you want to see a flowy movement? In the first case you need to either use a fast shutter speed (which may not be possible due to exposure and / or flash synch considerations) or a flash to "stop" the action, while in the second case you may need a tripod so that just the subject is moving, not the background as well (due to camera shake during long exposures) and maybe even an ND (neutral density) filter to manage the exposure if you’re shooting in bright conditions.

Then who or what will be moving? will it be the model or his/her dress or other objects? If it is not the model, then there is a simple trick: have someone else to move / throw / whatever the thing that you need to move (for clothes, you will need pieces with a lot of fabric, the more the merrier). If the model does it, his / her arms may show unwanted movement. If it is the model who is moving, it mostly depends on his / her skills. In my opinion, the best “action” shots happen when the model manages to hide the physical effort in his / her expression and to draw a beautiful shape with his / her body.

If it is the model who is moving, of course the other important consideration is… the movement itself! Will the model walk or run or jump or twirl or kick or…? Space and props and clothes (shoes! high heels = no jumping mostly unless you can provide a safe landing) will dictate the type of movement. In each case there are often just a few instants in the action sequence that make sense (e.g. with walking and kicking) among a whole lot of unusable movement. Another trick: when jumping, the best moment to capture tends to be the zenith (highest point) of the jump, because there the model can be almost static, for an instant.

Also…. focus! If you want to freeze motion, the face of the model (and generally all of his / her body) should be in focus. If you don’t have a camera made for sports and a lens that focuses fast (most consumer lenses don’t focus fast enough), you may want to pre-focus where the action will be and then switch to manual focus. This way you will avoid delays due to the camera trying to focus on a moving subject.

Then, framing and composition: you will need to frame loosely – it’s frustrating when everything is perfect but one hand or one foot are cut out of the frame. This may be a challenge in a studio with a small-ish backdrop or on location where there are unwanted elements around the spot where the action is supposed to happen. It's much easier to crop / remove rather than rebuilding missing pieces in post processing.

Last but not least… shoot the same action multiple times: it is very difficult to be sure to have caught the right combination of movement of the model and of the clothing and the right expression, especially on the small camera screen. Shoot and repeat a few times till you are confident you got it.

The designer hid behind the fence after throwing Maria's dress or the fringes up – lighted with a Profoto Air B1 500 naked. The harsh lightning adds additional drama.

Taylor takes flight, lighted with a Profoto Air B1 500 with beauty dish. In this case Taylor moved the dress by herself but I instructed her to let the wings fall down without moving her arms

Jasmine throws some gumballs up, lighted with 3 strobes and various modifiers (studio) - with this types of images retrying a lot of times is usually a must (many shots were binned because a gumball was hiding her eyes), even if collecting all the gumballs every time was a pain ;)

Marie Claire jumps in front of a coolly-colored Fiat, lighted with a Profoto Air B1 500 with beauty dish.