So, both my girlfriend and I like to have pictures taken of ourselves. We'll spend weeks or even months imagining a concept, figuring out a set of aesthetic ideals that go well together, creating clothes, accessories, coming up with strategies to work hair and makeup and finally applying it all to ourselves, finding a suitable background/area and photographing ourselves.
Some of the things serving this process (coming up with ideas, designing clothes, generally being hot) we're better at than others (hair and makeup, scouting locations), although we're improving on all fields. But one thing that comes up time and time again is that compared to everything else, our photographic abilities really suck, and our achievements in other parts of the process deserve better. We're using pretty decent borrowed compact digicams and under ideal outdoor lighting conditions will generally have a few really sharp and good pictures out of the hundreds we take, but this restricts us to the warmer half of the year and concepts served by an outdoors background. We don't like that.
So the first question is, where would you go or have you gone from there?
We've looked into DIY indoor shooting options. We've got a powerful construction lamp and diffusing paper sheets, but the result is still too single-angled. At longer opening times we screw up cause we're rarely content to take only angles that allow for resting the camera somewhere. We're barely employed crazies, so we're on a budget. Tips, experiences?
We're not opposed to working with someone else for a photographer, but we're not interested in someone who'll apply only their own tastes to everything and filter the results before we get to see them, or someone that'll demand 'intellectual property' of the final product in the form of any conditions other than attribution (in text, not photoshopped-in names) and perhaps a say/share in commercial uses we won't put them to anyway. So without beating around the bush, we'd need someone who'll appreciate us for what we do as-is and wants to work with us for the same reasons we want to do it. We'd love to work with a creative like mind that shares our tastes and has valuable ideas to contribute, but that might be asking too much.
So what conditions are reasonable in the photographer/'model' relationship? We bring awesome and aren't looking to be paid, but we desire someone either also packing the awesomeness or passive enough not to mess with ours, and willing to not act like they paid for anything.
The second question mostly for the models. Is there anything you do or did to learn to 'pose'? My girlfriend is pretty damn hot, but both me and other photographers have noticed she never really gets into what shes being. Her expressions look either neutral or forced - which is distinct from when she's not posing, since she looks just fine doing the things normally that she fails to pretend to do convincingly. I myself apparently do it well intuitively, simply imagining my role gives me an idea of how I would present myself in a situation, so I can't really advice her. Is there something you can do to practise this?
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