It's easy to repeat the same kind of photos over and over again, and sometimes it's necessary to do so. If someone needs a headshot for her website, she doesn't want to be the guinea pig for fish-eye experiments. But how do you push yourself to be more creative?
It all depends on where you are in your photographic journey. For some photographers, using a speedlight for the first time is their way of building their creative muscles. I'm sure that for a jaded a commercial photographer, doing any personal work that isn't bound by a client's requirements could get the juices flowing.
Some need to improve their technique. Look for mistakes in the frame and fixing them in subsequent images. For others it's improving their directing skills or patter with their subject. But the difficulty is finding talent long-suffering enough to allow you to indulge your experiments. As my son gets older, he's less patient with my demands to use him as my muse.
I wanted to further explore the stroboscopic capabilities of my Godox lights. I had taken stroboscopic images of Evie on her pole, and now I wanted to see how much further I could take things without the talent being anchored to a piece of equipment. And I wanted to do so with coloured gels.
While people like Evie get excited by the opportunity of unique pictures for her portfolio, others just want shots that make them look pretty on Instagram. How could I find people willing to help me out? Every time, I thought I'd found someone keen, they'd vanish once they learnt what I wanted to do.
In the end I reached out to an agency. I asked if they had a model that needed photos for her portfolio, and explained that I would take them, but that I'd also like to take more experimental work for my own collection. They would get what they needed and I would in turn get what I wanted.
And did it work? Yes, but I would have loved more time. I think I'm still figuring out the opportunities this technique offers. I could explore it for years before I felt it had exhausted it. Some shots I was really happy with:
Others I felt had potential:
And some didn't work at all:
I wish I'd had more time. I'd like to have tried difference the strobe speeds and durations and different colour combinations. But I guess I don't need to do this in one session. These things take time
Thanks to Vicki and Voda Model Management for helping me out.