MUSCLEPAPA.COM
John Hawley Marketing Services
Alyse Simons is the model in this first series of shots. Even with the spray tan, we could match her skin tone and wardrobe with her sophisticated, modern style, the foliage and architecture of the Orange County Convention Center all bound together by her flowing lines. That blouse will play tricks on your mind if you stare at it—great shirt for a shoot.
Photoshoot Considerations
My thoughts doing fitness model photograhy.
Black & white photos are good for isolating the focus on the lines and curves that color often distracts from. Of course, the panoramic impact of color will enhance the viewing experience. The energy is strong in this one.
I'm super-sensitive to steering making sure I capture shots with you where some of your important limbs don't show in a shot that can though well-framed cause the viewers mind to feel as though something is missing. In this case what is missing is her right arm.
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Variations
Another variation with cropping focusing on lines versus color.
Applied sepia tone & vignette to this image of Alyse Simons. Didn't have to crop much to pull out a bit of space in front of her and up the leg. As most of her arms are to her left, the look to her right along that shorter distance to the edge of the image works with hair and facial structure blending well and connecting behind her. It could be considered overlit on the face, but with her expression, I felt it looked better with a bit of overexposed glow. I'm not sure if it is as prickly as the palm trunk behind her, but it makes for likely appropriate symbolism.
Distinguish yourself by being uniquely you.
#alysesimons, #musclepapa,
Example of cropping to reduce distractions and further focus attention on the subject Alyse Simons. Some operators I've worked for over the years encouraged 3/4th framing of the subject to maintain attention on the model. Others emphasize the focal point, which in this instance might be considered a bit high. A few inches lower on my part would have put more emphasis on curves while further centering the downward gaze within the frame.
I tend not to crop too heavily with my clients' images as it provides them with more in the form of raw material for their own creative applications. Cropping, in this instance, likewise removes the hand and shapely legs which are a strong statement about her physique and who she is.
What we do is provide you options for your vision.
Models, even first-timers, have their style of movement associated with their personalities, tastes, and standards. As a photographer making a living in fitness, I steer my clients towards posing in variations of their competitive stage poses with varied hand placement, moving delts & and shoulders back and forth, looking to the camera, and giving 3/4 profile shots left and right, creating aesthetically pleasing poses that emphasize their lines while in keeping with who they are. Every shoot I feel somewhat like I did undergraduate zoology field research or as a historian might. Rather than push you to be something you are not in this day and time, I believe it's equally important for my clients to focus on what they can uniquely offer in keeping with general fitness-oriented posing protocols.
Sarah Grace, featured here, is an attorney whom I had the opportunity to shoot with after she competed in the Orlando Europa Games. I found in reflection, going through over 2000 images in the order they were shot, that as she became more comfortable with shooting with me, she became more fluid in her movements, gliding from pose to pose without me doing much in the way of posing direction other than maybe a tweaking cue or two. Working in this way and seeing a client blossom before my eyes is a pleasure.
There are as many ways you can parse your photographic images into different looks, colors and tones aside from what many in fitness believe they must do, such as grit their teeth while flexing or looking sexy and exhausted after the production assistant has sprayed oily water on you. Focus on your expressions, knowing what expressions you prefer people to see. Duck faces work for Dana Linn Bailey, but unlike doing a double-bi, she does the signature duckface better than most. Be uniquely you. There is more to you than meets the eye, and how you present yourself will either tweak audiences' interest or.....not. Randall Scott shot after the '16 Orlando Europa Games.
Musclepapa.com is a photo/video contractor for our clients. If you have products, merchandise or other aspects of your brand you wish to promote our shoots provide you full and unrestricted copyright to your images. Its not about us, but rather you and your brand.
Shot Framing & Vignettes:
Fitness shoots in the gym from my experience in photo and video require the shooter and model to pay attention to the message they want to present and how the shots taken will present that message. When shooting from above it tends to make the subject appear smaller. When shooting from centered up or below and up at the model they are made to appear larger.
Men should typically be shot from straight on or below to fill the frame with their persona. The same could be said of women with the tweaking exception to this rule that women often prefer to look smaller by shooting from above. This throws a monkey wrench into fitness versus fashion and other female editorial work. Cleavage shots from above pointing down at the subject can be appealing to a male audience, but too much sexualization of images is a turn off for female audiences. Consider the audience you want to appeal to and shoot accordingly.
Vignettes are a helpful tool in centering focus on the subject as does shallow depth of field that can create fuzzing of the background and the subject to then pop! In our typical shoot yielding 1500-2500 images we steer clear of what we consider too much vignetting as it can interfere with cropping and further edits by clients. Vignettes can be of various colors and opacity and enhance or take away from the value of your images depending on what purposes they are assigned.
Controlling your imagery is controlling your brand
Copyright should be important to even the occasional model or athlete as when you are paying for a photoshoot the photographer owns the images even though they may be of you. While you will have some legal control over their use by the photographer if a poor representation of you and you take them to court. However, if you don't have some contractual agreement providing you legal right to use for anything other than self promotion you might have to fight the photographer in court if you use them for commercial purposes.
Musclepapa.com provides full use copyright/shared copyright. Clients and their licensees can use their images for whatever they like and we retain rights to do the same although our only typical use is in our magazine features and in association with promoting content with our media sponsors. Read your contract with the photographer. Ours is posted in our bookings section of the website.
Model: Jennifer Gaylor Messer
What is Composition?
"First and foremost, “composition” describes the placement of relative objects and elements in a work of art. Consequently, composition is a key aspect of a good work of art. There is hardly a way to overemphasize the importance of composition. Any aspiring artist ought to give the composition of his work much attention. A good composition has just enough detail. Too few elements is bad because it robs the work of art of necessary detail that makes correct interpretation possible. It also ruins the balance of an image. And too many elements can be very distracting as well. Good composition requires good balance. It is best to ensure all the elements present are necessary for the idea or story you are trying to convey." Source: photographylife; what is composition.
Model: Jennifer Gaylor Messer
Cropping
Cropping or trimming as one might call it is a helpful way of narrowing the view, focusing attention on aspects of your image composition. Unlike many other photographers Musclepapa.com provides clients all images from their shoots cropping only a few as examples of what you might do with them.
Over cropping can occur where you may receive only a few images per shoot and the photographer decides rather than you what needs cropping eliminating your own ability to make that decision. Remember photography is both technical and a form of art and as such beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Try this experiment; post numerous variations of the same image cropped differently and your audience will typically not like them all uniformly. Thus, as someone who contracts with clients for bulk images I encourage my clients to apply their own tastes to their images for further editing including cropping for composition they favor possibly for a variety of reasons, filtering, etc.
Model: Jennifer Gaylor Messer
