It was early Sunday morning and I made the journey out to Rolling Meadows. Jeanine and I have worked on several projects before, mainly for Radio One Chicago. Jeanine is helping me find clients for photography and to show a different, more creative perspective, we attempted portrait photography.
Our first attempt was to take a few test shots in the bathroom to see what mood we were looking for. While I did bring lighting, I felt that since we were using black and white I could just bump the ISO and get the settings I need. The pictures were taken at ISO 500. I wanted to use a lower ISO, but these are only for the web and social media, so there was not much of a need.
Not much editing was done to these first two pictures, just a small amount of cropping. I try to do most of the framing in the camera so I don’t have to crop in post. My camera has a full frame sensor and I try to use that to my advantage. I really appreciate knowing that what I see in the viewfinder is what I will get as my picture. I really like the cinematic feel that the first set of pictures have.
The second set of photos we tried to get a little more artsy with. We weren’t really trying to go full boudoir, but it was a small portion of inspiration. I wanted to look at the space surrounding Jeanine in order to frame her and give different senses of emotion.
I wanted to try to frame her in different ways to see what moods each would create. I’ll leave the interpretations up to you, the reader. I do feel that at the angles I shot Jeanine at made the pictures look more submissive. I don’t think I was necessarily aware of that at the time I was taking the photos, but it’s something I hope to remember the next time I shoot.
With this style of photography, the question is do you want your client to look dominant or submissive? I feel that the choices (or lack of) that I made ended up making the second round of pictures made Jeanine look more submissive than dominant.
Part of me was debating if some of the pictures were a little too underexposed. However, I decided to keep the adjustments I made because I felt that it was the mood that we both were looking for in this instance.
Because we have known each other for so long, the photo shoot went smoothly. It was easy to direct her and position her. Jeanine was comfortable enough with me to physically adjust her pose. During the shoot, I often told her that this would be very different if I were working with a new client. I feel that I would need a woman in the room to give the client some sense of assurance, depending on the
