Casting Call for Lighting

Did anyone tell Francis Ford Coppola and his cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, that they really should have used more light in that cave scene with Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now?”   If someone did, I doubt they would have listened.  Filmmakers and their creative teams know light is a character, too, serving a crucial creative purpose right along with the dialog.

Yet while watching some video tutorials on the new Photoshop CS6, I was struck by the amount of new features designed to get our photographs to look “better.”  Things like “more accurate” skin tone, “correct” color, etc., etc.  And I just had to stop watching.

We’re in an era now where we’re free (and obligated) to form our own opinions about what the lighting in our photos is supposed to look like.  Maybe that means underexposed skin tone, or harsh shadows, or a dark alley that’s actually dark.  You make the call.  Photoshop can’t do that for you—just like it can’t write dialog for a film.

So I say, cast your lighting as a creative element of your shoots, and make sure it performs to your creative vision, not some “non-vision” in a book, or worse, someone else’s vision.

Ghosts of Fashion

Chances are, if you regularly view fashion editorials, you’ve seen an old, stuck-in-the 1950s, ghost-town-like set known at the Four Aces. Maybe you’ve even declared how tired you’ve become with yet another lonely desert theme that looks exactly like the last lonely desert theme.   And chances are you might be right, they do look the same because they were all shot at the Four Aces.

The first few times I saw editorials shot there, sure, they looked cool.  Really cool. But with each new one I saw,  I grew bored and critical of editors who couldn’t put their creative talent to use to find something new.  Something different.  Something not that.

But then, literally one day, I had a change of heart.  The Four Aces suddenly became, after all the repetition, special.  It became an iconic location for fashion shoots.  Places like Paris or NYC are iconic of course too—way iconic.  But they’re known and are famous for many different reasons.  Fashion editorials may use and enjoy Paris’ iconic-ness, but so too can a tourist post-card or a bus tour travel brochure.

But the Four Aces?  Fashion has that all to itself.  Or just about, as movie productions sometimes use it too, but in a disguised and dressed up way. 

Fashion uses it just as it sits there, as a little oasis of cool in the hot desert.  And as each new year brings new collections on by the Four Aces for a visit, they join the collective remnants of past years’ collections there,  soon to join them as ghosts of fashion seasons past.

Contrast #2 (or, Tone Music vs. Color Music)

I once had a painting teacher who felt that a picture can have either strong tone contrast or strong color contrast, but not both together, for best results (or, tone music and color music, as he liked to call it). Chiaroscuro works best with more monochrome palettes, and impressionism with almost primary colors. A scheme of warm and cool for shadows and light does bridge the two, but will excel at neither.

Using this thinking for fashion photography, clothes with big blocks of tone are a perfect candidate for black and white and strong light and shade.

And for bold prints or bold color blocking, better to stick with high-key lighting.

(http://benjaminkanarek.com)

As always though, this is art, not science, so sometimes photos can and do have both strong tone contrast and strong color contrast. But I do think the below example muddies the prints, and isn’t as effective at showcasing them.

In the end, however you decide to light and style it, try to make it sign out loud.

Contrast #1

Contrast. Such a simple word, and such a seemingly simple concept. Yet art is nothing if not an endless, endless quest for it. Light and dark. Warm and cool. Hard and soft. Smooth and rough. Big and small. Small and big. Organic and industrial. And on, and on, and on.

On a fundamental level, without some tone contrast, all you have is a solid color. Even Rothko varies his tones. And even if he didn’t, the viewing conditions would give it, at the very least, some slight contrast.

So contrast’s important, and I think about it a lot and always have a lot to say about it. But what made me think about it just now was this photo up on the Fashion Gone Rogue site:

A beautiful, simple portrait. But what jumped out at me was the contrast of those zippers against both the soft skin and against the soft quilt fabric of the jacket. I’m not saying it’s earth-shattering, but try to imagine the same photo, but without those zippers. Or with the zippers, but with a thick leather jacket. When I do, a completely different feeling comes to me.

Now maybe using a jacket with zippers wasn’t a conscious use of contrast, and maybe it shouldn’t and couldn’t have been conscious, but instead was a gut feeling (it is art, not science, after all). On the other hand, maybe it could have been conscious.
But however it happened, the subtly of the contrast here really helps (I hope) to amplify the illustration of what contrast can do for a picture.

How 1 + 1 can = 3

If you put two design elements in a photograph, you now have three things: the photograph itself, plus the two design elements.

Okay, so maybe the photograph itself is another design. The point is, though, that when you choose and arrange your elements for a photograph, you create something that's potentially much bigger than the sum of its parts. So choose wisely (but just not too wisely).

Preach To The Choir

Contrary to the popular expression, the choir is often the best group to be preaching to. That's because the choir that constitutes your existing and devoted fan base needs to hear from you—and often.

The choir sings your song, gets its inspiration from you, and wonders what you’re going to say next with your art. They’re the ones who fly hundreds or thousands of miles to attend Fashion Week, while a tourist walking by Lincoln Center doesn’t care one bit what’s going on inside, and most likely never will.