‘In the Bush.’
June 2, 2020Now this is a phrase you will hear a lot if your ever go on a shoot with me! We will alway end up being in the centre of a piece of shrubbery; leaves in our hair and twigs poking us in the eye!
its something that I picked up through time, a technique that helps me create cohesion in my portfolio, and guarantees beautiful results.
I love trying to create in a simple space, and bring new and unique elements, with each photo being different.
After putting theses photos together, I am pleasantly shocked at how coherent these random photos I put together are! I went through my 2019 hardrive and found any photos I knew were in bushes, only to see afterwards how well they all go together!
So even when you put most of my bush related photos together in my portfolio, you can see what benefit a consistent location can have: I have similar consistency in my work, yet maintain unique characters with different stories from one another. I have created difference in the other-wise similar.
And this is exactly my point! Use a simple location, and create a special narrative in that space. Because everyone had a story to tell. So harness that story, encase it in a simple space where you have full reign on how people perceive it, and let your character and story speak volumes over where you are and any other bits of information that aren’t necessary. The location in my work is typically mimimil, so it doesn’t defer from what matters the most, the character. Instead, I aim for the location to aid the character and allow the viewer to get a rough idea of where this character is.
Now you may want to create in a different way, where the story is controlled by the location. This is something I do in my work sometimes too, some stories need a location to be clear for the audience to understand what is going on.
My only hope with this blog post is that you consider a different way of perceiving how you decide location, look at your characters journey and how a location may support that concept as a visual aid to the audile, or if you want the location to be timeless and minimal so that the character an be the main focus in your photo.