Less Gear, More Character?
Ine has been helping me out as a model on quite a few workshops and equipment tests but we never really did a proper shoot together. We talked about shooting many times but our agendas seemed to be rather incompatible. But at the end of last year we finally managed to do a shoot. We decided to do a sad story about a lonely girl. So we went outdoors at night and tried to setup some dramatic light. Ine dug deep into herself to get the tears flowing.
To be honest, we settled on no story at all, we both just felt like shooting and experimenting. The tears are from the ice cold wind.
After ten minutes outside in the cold, my trigger finger started trembling so bad that I managed to shoot faster in single shot mode than the motordrive can. Five more cold minutes later, my hands pretty much stopped working and we wisely decided to continue our shoot indoors. Ine kindly agreed to explore and experiment with some ideas I’ve been thinking about for a while.
I’ve always liked to do a lot with little. It was born out of necessity, when I started I just didn’t have much gear so I had to be creative and inventive with what little I had. I slowly started investing in more and better gear but stayed true to the Strobist philosophy of “less gear, more brain”. It suited the kind of assignments I mostly did in those days: annual reports, family portraiture, corporate portraits, weddings, … All work where clients really appreciated my ability to work fast, travel light and yet get good and affordable results. Nowadays I get to do more and more bigger commercial work in which there’s time and budget to work with big lights and crews. I dig the complete control and the freedom to work for hours towards one image. But the more “big” stuff I do, the more I feel the need to counterbalance it somehow with more intuitive, organic personal work with little gear.
For a while I felt really torn between having the complete control of shooting “big” and the intimacy of shooting “small”. A couple of months ago, it struck me that I don’t have to choose between the two. It seems logical but even though I refuse to be pigeon holed into just one little niche of photography, I kept feeling like I should specialize and build my name into just one thing. There are valid commercial reasons to limit yourself to a very defined “look” but I feel that for me these limitations kill my creativity. And isn’t it just that creativity, that is my most valid asset. It’s the only thing in my business nobody else has.
I got lots of creative ideas boiling in my head for personal projects. Some require to be shot “big” and will probably speak to potential commercial clients. But I also feel the need to go back to my roots from time to time and shoot intimate, dramatic portraits with the beauty of the imperfection.
In this shoot with Ine I tried to get a certain atmosphere I’ve been thinking about for a while. I believe it can only be obtained when shooting with minimal gear, so I can focus 95% of my attention on the subject. I’m not quite where I want to be with this, but it’s getting in the right direction. I’m sorry if this blog post is a bit confusing and vague. That’s because I haven’t figured everything out just yet. But I find the whole thought process interesting to share and it will certainly be continued over the next months. I’ll talk about what I want to achieve, what inspired it and how I will eventually make it work.
I got some other shoots planned to explore this atmosphere even more. Big thanks to Ine for a fun shoot without any guarantees to get some good pictures (because I’m working out of my comfort zone). I certainly hope Ine will be willing to do a rematch once I got everything figured out.
Hey Bert,
Love these shots. Very simple yet drawing out the emotion of the scene. I agree with your comments about not getting stuck in a box of of style or look. I have struggled with that mentality and agree that creativity needs to be free to explore different styles and looks or it will die a slow death.
Cheers.
So simple but lots of emeotionin there! Great like always!
Nice shots of a béautiful girl!
I’m not at all trying to step outside my comfort zone cause I’m not even remotely comfortable in my comfort zone itself
But your attempts convince me every time!
Keep it up!
great thoughts Bert, can’t wait to hear more
Great article, Bert. I appreciate the honesty. But it’s very refreshing to hear the less-is-more approach from someone as experienced as yourself. It’s also an exciting idea not to be pigeonholed and do what you want and have it both ways, as it were. Too many photographers think that they can’t do it, when it is indeed possible.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom (as always).
Good for you for exploring the creativity that we all hope so much to delve into.
I love the B&W’s, especially “ine_102″ but that 2nd color shot is just fantastic!
never let your creativity been killed!
A great look at how we can be pigeon-holed by the industry and how you break out of it. I too take the Less is more mentality, because it stretches my brain but also out of necessity as I don’t have a lot of gear. I don’t think I really want a lot of gear because it can be overwhelming, for me and the client when we are setting up lights for movie scene when all we are doing is taking a simple headshot Thanks for sharing your personal work. Love your B&W’s!
thx all, there is definitely more to come about this. I’m in this process and writing about it, makes me understand what I’m doing
Fantastic…can’t wait to hear more! Diptych #2 is my favorite.
P.S. Are you sure the tears aren’t because she lost her cat? =)
[...] you read my previous blog post, you can probably tell that I’m in some kind of searching phase. Maybe I should explain a bit [...]
I love your pictures
I’m afraid I didn’t find the post either confusing or vague – I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I really like the use of black and white. It reminds me why I loved Tri-X back in the day.
[...] recently read a very interesting blog article Less Gear, More Character? by Bert Stephani and I have to credit him for giving me the idea on the following article. I [...]