Never Work with Children . . . Part 4

So - the last day of  5, in the studio.  Today I had 3 sessions booked. First thing, my lovely mate Hazel, and her two children, Declan (age 10) and Hannah (age 7). Following them would be Abbey again - but this time with two of her younger sisters, Lena and Layla. And to round off the week, Becky, a newly met fellow student, was coming in with her two youngsters, Coby (age 5) and Bella (age 2)

The session with Hazel, Declan and Hannah was sooooooooo easy - I've known them all for years, and had in fact done both Hazels engagement and wedding photographs, so all of them are very used to me pointing a camera in their direction.  Dec and Hannah are really nice kids and are absolutely great about having their photograph taken, and this session flew by.

 

Hannah also decided to dress as a 'Fairy Princess'  , with the additions of silk rose petals and holographic party poppers that I'd added to the props 

                                                                                  

And Declan decided to show how energetic he is !

 

Then some shots of the two together - these two get on pretty well, and I think this can be seen in the images I managed to get .

And once again, Mum was persuaded to join in . . . 

Thank you again, to Hazel and kids - not only for a really fun time in the studio - but also for a lovely lunch afterwards:)

Next up - Layla and Lena - and again, I have to say, I was so lucky with my models this week - these two were a pleasure to photograph :)

First, Layla . . .

And then - Lena - her Mum has sent a request that I 'try' to get her to smile 'naturally' on the photographs - admittedly she was a little tense and the smile a little forced at first - but that was easily solved by getting her to shout 'Knickers' at regular intervals - which just left her creased laughing and with a beautiful, natural, huge smile!

And again, shots of the two girls together - and later they were joined by Abbey, so I was able to take photographs of all 3

 

 I Really like the smile on Lena's face on this image .

And so onto the final session of the week - Coby and Bella.

Becky and I had only been introduced very briefly, by Claire, at the beginning of the week, so this was another opportunity to work with models that I really don't know at all - as I said before, good practise for me.


Two very adorable kids, but poor Coby had, I think, used up his supply of staying still for any length of time, in school that day - at only 5, the school day is a long, long day, as I well remember from when my own children were that age. Poor Coby wanted to play and charge round, and unfortunately a photographic studio, with all the lights and cables, isn't a safe place for a little 'un to let off steam. Because of this, this was the shortest session I  did all week, but I was pretty pleased with the results, and again, its a valuable lesson for me - its not fair to expect kiddies under 6 to be able to cope with a studio session at the end of a long day, so bookings there are best done during school holidays, or at weekends.

Such a pair of cuties, though!

I love catching expressions like the one on Bella's face in this image .

That gap-toothed smile is the sort of thing I love   to look back on with my own kids .

 Again - a very un-posed natural moment - and again, I think this sort can make the best images !

So - there ends the week - and there is a lot I have to learn from the experience.

I titled this blog 'Never Work with Children . . . ' thinking of the well known phrase - but did I find it true? .  Actually, no - I won't deny that the week was hard work . With little folk about, the first issue was safety - had to be constantly on alert, especially with those too young to understand the dangers of the hot lights and cables everywhere. And you have to balance warning the kids about this, with making each and every session fun for them - children's attention and concentration spans are much shorter than the average adults, plus you are asking them to stay on the back drop, smile most of the time, and put up with hot, flashing lights - its a lot to expect, so you really have to work at keeping them entertained, and happy.  This brings up the value of a good prop box, if you are working with kids - after this week, the list for mine runs through soft toys, building blocks, bright wooden cars and trains, dressing up clothes and hats, shades, maybe scarves and feather boa's, plus a bubble machine, party poppers and silk rose petals. For the under 2's, I need to add a couple of soft throws, maybe fake fur rugs - and these have to be washable, cos little 'uns can and do have accidents - as I was reminded a couple of times during the week, lol !  Also some sort of basket/chair for again, the very tiny, who are unable to sit unassisted .

You have to be prepared for kids who don't want to cooperate - either find a way to engage them, or let them take their time to relax and have time out when needed - because of this, its pretty much a judgement call depending on the child, as to how long the session lasts - so work fast, just in case ! You need to take your cue on how to approach the individual child from the child's own attitude - 2 year old Bless wasn't ever going to respond to me acting daft, but 2 year old Jack liked blowing raspberries and silly faces.  I guess you have to 'read' the kid pretty quickly and be prepared to go with what works for them.

I feel that the very best images I got were when the child completely relaxed, and behaved naturally - that sometimes meant big smiles, but sometimes it meant pulling tongues or gazing dreamy eyed, away from the camera, or leaping up and down like a loon - that's OK, I think you have to go with that in order to get the best images - its the expressions, rather than the poses that make the picture.  In quite a few of the images, I felt that I'd captured the emotion of the child at a certain point, and especially when the parents got involved, capturing the relationship between them and the child produced a lot of my favourite images of the week.

It was a lovely bonus to get the reaction of the parents when I'd edited and passed on the digital images to them - I felt they had done me a favour, giving their time to be my models - but, even though I can see for myself that I have a lot to learn and a fair way to go in this genre, so many of them gave me great feedback and were thrilled with the images I gave them. Children's photography may not be seen as very 'glamorous' or even as 'art' - but it produces some precious memento's for the parents, and there is a lot of satisfaction in them being very happy with what you produce. 

If I head in the direction of studio photography, including children's portraiture, by way of a career, then its possible it will be down the self employed route. I've researched the prices offered locally, and run a few informal 'polls' amongst friends, to find out what they consider good value and a reasonable amount to pay.  I've costed things out, and come up with a figure that most seem to feel is a bargain, for either a CD or memory stick of digital images, that will leave me with a reasonable profit - but most have said that they would also like the option of prints, and that's where the costs rocket - OK, you can nip into a supermarket and order prints, but the quality isn't great. Home printing is not cheap, and although I have an A3 printer, several parents have said they would like the option of bigger sizes - or canvas prints.  The cheapest prices I can come up with, having no access to trade at the moment, for really good quality prints, if I am to offer at a 'reasonable price' leaves little room for a decent profit - so that's a problem I am going to have to find a way round.

I also never got to the bottom of the issue with the 'tint' on the background - the image on my camera was spot on, but once it was viewed on the computer, that 'blue' or 'grey' tinge was there, and I need to work at sorting that to avoid hours spent editing!

I owe a Huge Thank You to all my 'models' from that week - I learnt lots and being honest, enjoyed every minute of it - thank you for your time and your patience, and for the lovely comments you fed back to me - it was all very appreciated:)


Oh - and in case anyone is wondering, I am not yet ready to try out the second part of the well know phrase - "or Animals" - just yet:)

The Final Module: Joiners

This for me, was an 'old friend' revisited. I had chosen the theme 'Connected images' as my exam piece, for my AS level in early 2010, and I had become fascinated, and highly appreciative of the Joiner works of David Hockney, and several other artists who had chosen to work in this form. I particularly liked Hockney's 'Pearblossom Highway'

The brief advised us to look at other examples of Hockneys work, specifically, The Desk -

And 'Work Trolley', which I was unable to find an image of, despite several searches.  However,  'The Desk' like  'Pearblossom Highway' , other Hockneys and also the work of Noel Myles, which I also re-visited, re-awakened my fascination with this style of work.

I love the distortion of perspective - with Pearblossom Highway, you initially look at what appears to be a representational piece, but then you look again and the distortions starts to jump out at you,  and you find yourself looking again and again, noticing each time the slight skew, and also, with this piece, how its captured the passage of time and the movement in the landscape.  'The Desk' demonstrates the distortion of putting a 3 dimensional view/object into a  2 dimensional  image, even more.

Having experimented extensively with joiners before, I had tried printing out the individual pictures and sticking them down, overlapping them, to create a final piece. However I felt that the uneven surface of the final piece detracted from the the distortion in perspective that I especially wanted to show, and after a lot of 'trying out' of different methods, I eventually started to use a programme called picasa, which allowed me to arrange the photographs as I would if I was using individual pieces physically placed together , but produced a 'flattened image' which allowed the distortion and movement that I wanted to show.

I looked again at several of the pieces I had created for my AS level, as 'practice' pieces -

And at the 3 pieces which led to the final image
 

                                                                    

   These were going to be my final pieces, until several fellow students and friends said that the 'Kitchen Window' left them wondering what was beyond the window - and that they had found themselves craning their necks and looking at the picture from different angles as the distortion led them to feeling that they could 'see through' the window.





So, I decided to try and create a 'through the window' view . . .

 I was really happy with this image, as the photographs were taken over 3 days, and I felt the differences in the sky showed this. The appearing of my dog in two different places captured a sense of the movement that I loved in Pearblossom Highway, and the lines of the flagstones gave the sense of distortion that I particularly like in this sort of image.  I also really liked the reflections in the garage windows.

So - to tackle this subject again !

In looking at the desk, I thought I would try and focus initially on an object, and chose something simple for a practise run

Although I loved the distortion of space and lines, I didn't feel that this captured the sense of movement and change and time passage that I really find fascinating about this style.

I looked again at the work of Simran Gleason, who had produced 'joiners' of tree's that I also liked very much

 

 I liked the sense of movement in these pictures, and had decided to try a 'joiner' of a tree - then we had 3 or 4 days of high winds, and on the second day, looking out, I watched the 15 foot high cordeline in the garden being battered and - it turned out later - being destroyed by the weather. Well - here was a subject that would hopefully capture the sense of movement, and time passing that I so liked - and that would also capture an 'event', so grabbing my camera, out I went.  The resultant image comprised of pictures taken over 3 days, and moving left to right across the image shows the tree going from fully 'leaved' to battered and bald as the wind damaged it.

 

I had virtually decided to make this my final image, but a couple of weeks afterwards, I made a visit to one of my favourite 'photo' spots, the Ffrwd. I have a habit of sitting by the pond there and taking photograph after photograph of the view before me - I absolutely love the reflective qualities of the pond, and the way the sky and surrounding tree's are shown in it. And that brought me back to how I had liked the effect of the reflections in the window in my AS piece - so I started to take photographs for a joiner of the Ffrwd.  I made two visits in total, on one day the sky was the most amazing blue, and on the second, a rain fall was rolling in, and the sky was stormy looking and grey. To take it one step further, I took photographs using two different lens, 17 - 55ml, and 70-300ml zoom - I wanted to see if I could combine the two to make an image that was still representational, but in which the distortion was further emphasised and enhanced.

I am really happy with the final image

Using the two different lenses really increased the sense of distortion - though it also made it more difficult to put the piece together - and by changing the size of the photographs I used, it meant I could put more detail into parts of the picture, particularly in the pond reflections.  Although this doesn't give the sense of 'flattening out' a 3 dimensional image that 'The Desk encapsulates, I like the way the combination of photographs and different focal lengths,  aids the creation of 'depth' in the image.

Next: The Final module: Typologies.