Unlike snapshooters — those who take photos — when you make a photo you have control over your subject. This added control opens up a wealth of new possibilities.
Appearances
Perhaps the most obvious new option is your ability to choose the right look. If your goal is to visualize a hero, for instance, you’ll probably be looking for someone tall and muscular, with friendly facial features. By contrast, portraying a victim will be far easier for someone of a more diminutive stature.
Innocence can represented in a child’s smooth skin, experience in an old person’s wrinkles. Scars tend to make people more imposing. Long hair on a woman can seem matronly, while short hair is playful. Long hair on a man tends to be rebellious, and bald tends to be more intimidating.
Thinner people tend to have very strongly defined features; proper lighting can reveal a whole landscape of muscle, bone, tendons, and veins. Heavier people, on the other hand, tend to have a more smooth shape, with less features.
Special talents
Sometimes the features of the person aren’t as important as what they can do. Do you need someone who can juggle? Someone can can do the splits? Does your idea require someone with great strength, or excellent balance, or the ability to hold still for a long time? While these types of requirement are less common, they do come up when you start taking it upon yourself to make a photo.
Environment
Where you shoot is an equally important part of your subject as who you shoot. The environment has many implications on the feeling of a photo. Synthetic building materials (brick, concrete, steel) tend to make a cold and ominous feeling, whereas more natural settings (consisting of woods, water, grass, flowers) tend to feel more warm and welcome by comparison.
Environment can also create limitations. For instance, you don’t want to shoot tall people inside a typical home, because the space (or focal length of your lens) necessary to fit them into the shot will cause you to catch unwanted details like ceilings and light fixtures. Likewise, most beauty and glamour requires lenses with long focal lengths, which will have you wishing for more working space than what a typical home provides in any of its rooms.
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October 26th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
[...] those who take photos may already have some control over their subject, the power to choose your subject that is introduced when you make a photo may be quite new. Will you choose a subject with hard, [...]