mrgtturbo wrote in post #5968978
Jim....
Are you still there? I can't tell.... my eyes are all bloodshot from crying so hard.
Just kidding.
Thank you for your 2 cents worth... but I give it atleast the value of a nickle. :P
Alot of what you said made MUCH sense.
She is unexperianced as a model, but in my opinion has so very much potential as one.
I am unexperianced in shooting people. I'm trying to change that, and she's been a huge asset to me with this goal. She's a wonderful girl.
The first day we both felt discomfert, (as you can now imagine). There were 4 of us there alltogether, I offered no direction AT ALL!!! So she did naturally disconnect from me. Her and I have spoken of this after the fact. We both saw where we needed to improve in this. This is why the 2nd day seems much more "usable". Our comfert levels were much more acceptable, I, (or should I say the camera), exsisted a whole lot more in her eyes on this day. She probably put in alot more effort to improve than I did. I offered little direction this day... but still not as much as I should have. A lot of what you are telling us we've been learning from this together. So without a doubt I am sure she would agree with you as I do.
As far as a pretty girl playing dress up for someone with a camera goes. YOU ARE SO MEAN!!! LOL No that's not what I meant. You are right... expecially on the first day. That would probably be the most accurate way to explain that day... (from both of our stand points), until she was in the field just having fun. Come the 2nd day... I cannot comment to her thoughts, but for me I felt less like she was playing dress up, and less like I was just clicking shots of a pretty girl. I felt like we were in this thing together. We shared a goal. I think she enjoyed the day in a much different way than the 1st time. The 2nd day of shooting made me feel really good about what we were doing. But you are absolutly correct... we have more to learn, and more to work on.
I thank you for all your advice.
Aaron
Hey Aaron,
First let me say thank you for taking my comments as they were intended! A lot of folks can get a little defensive as I do have something of a tendancy to be "brutal" but personally I find honest feedback the best way to learn 
.
Beyond what others have already mentioned, there is one last thing I would like to add based on your comments here....HAVE FUN! One of the things that both you and she will discover as you journey more into this is that, as I mentioned before, this is really a collaborative process and as such, the photographer and the model have to develop not only a good "working relationship" but also trust.
That said, one of the more difficult things to deal with I think is getting a new model to simply "relax" in front of the camera. Unless the person (male or female) is a blatant exhibitionist, there is usually at least a degree of self-doubt or a lack of self-confidence. I think this is true of many people who have to "perform"...after 17 years of working with me as a musician, my wife -STILL- gets stage fright (more like stage terror!) and unless I give her something to do to keep her mind busy (like setting up the PA system), she usually ends up backstage 5 minutes before the show starts "tossing her cookies". A great many people over the years have told my wife how talented she is and what a great vocalist she is, but there's always a certain amount of self-doubt there..."what if I screw up" and so on.
Recently I too was working with a young lady who was doing her first work as a model and it wasn't hard to see she was scared sh*tless! LOL!!! You could really see it in the first couple of shots I took too. This was something she really wanted to do and we had had a couple of meetings before hand to talk about things (what she expected, what kind of modeling she wanted to do, etc.,) but on the day of the shoot, she was simply terrified. I started joking around with her...got her to crack a couple of smiles and as I was working, I'd show her what I was doing and why (how different lighting set ups would effect the pictures, etc). I think in her mind this gave her a little more confidence because she could see the pictures were coming out pretty decent and she started to get a better understanding of what it was she was supposed to be doing. The shoot ended up running about an hour over time because of it, but the shots I got towards the end were about 1000% better than those first few because she finally relaxed and started "going with it".
Very simply, if your not having fun (or the model isn't having fun), it's going to show in the pictures. And that lack of confidence both on your part or her part -will- come through as well. The best "people" photographers that I know of have this wonderful ability to get people...total strangers...to relax in front of the camera. They can sit down with a person who they've never met and feel like "an old friend" within the first 3 minutes. Whether this is a "gift" or something they have to work at I don't know, but it's as simple as this...if you can get your model to relax and the both of you can have a little fun during the shoot, you'll get much better images for it!
Also don't worry about making mistakes...you -WILL- make them (and so will your model)...it goes with the biz. Just acknowledge those mistakes, try to learn from them and then move on. One of the truly beautiful things about shooting digital is that you can delete those mistakes as you make them. "Ooppsss...she blinked...D-E-L-E-T-E" LOL!!! As another personal example, most of my gear is...shall we say, "low end"? Cactus triggers, $70 Ebay mono lights, etc., so I do end up from time to time having the lights mis-fire or something. Again, no biggie...if the shot looks like crap, I just delete...and in some cases I even find the occasional "happy accident" where the mis-fire created a more interesting lighting than I had originally planned. Again, you just go with it.
Since this is something that you said your both working on, you have a unique opportunity here...you both can do things over again since you're both working on this together. From what you've said, it's not like this is a one time deal where you have to go in and get everything done in a couple of hours (and done correctly) and then just move on...you can go back (both of you) and learn from your mistakes. In other words, there's no pressure here! I would suggest that the two of you go back and look at all of the pictures you've shot so far and talk about them. Decide what you like and what worked and what you don't like. Maybe even the both of you can go thru a few fashion mags too for some ideas and inspiration...and again share your thoughts with each other.
Okies...I'll stop now before I over-load your brain again . I'm NOT a man of few words....fortunately I type around 80 wpm! LOL!!! As always I hope you find some wisdom in all of this and I sincerely hope it helps!
Peace,
Jim
"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. " - Ansel Adams
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