Where do you want me to look?

© Joselito Briones




*****
Any photographer who has ever done a shoot with models would have been asked this question at one point. It's easy enough to remember that your point of view will be exactly the same as that of the people who will see your photo. The answers:

"Look at the lens."
-(keyworded and disambiguated as "Looking at Camera (composition)")
Easiest and direct, this is where the photographer makes the most connection with the model. There is instantaneous feedback between the two, and both are immediately satisfied. Ads that use this kind of photos are direct and confrontational - hard sell. It says to the viewer, "You! Look here, you want this. Trust me." Needless to say, for this kind of images to work, you need trustworthy-looking models, or at least ones whom a viewer will not feel threatened by. Exception is when you deliberately want your message to be threatening.

"Look away from the lens"
- (keywords: Looking Away / Sideways Glance) Probably the most popular stock pose. The viewer is totally comfortable looking at the photo because he knows he is not being addressed, yet if the body of the model is still mostly facing the camera, there's still some sort of connection between the the subject and the observer. Like safely watching someone - there's a chance of direct contact but at that particular moment that the photo was shot, the viewer is within the comfort of anonymity. Add a hint of a smile and the ambiguity of connection between subject and viewer is enhanced. If the model's body is also turned away from the lens, the dynamics is lost and the viewer really is just an outside observer - even with an interesting expression, the subject is perceived to be reacting from a third person in or out of the frame.
- (keywords: Looking Away / Looking Up / Candid) The subject is mostly reacting to his/her own thoughts and feelings, or carefree and unaware of his/her body language, usually on the positive side.
- (keywords: Looking Away / Looking Down) Introverted and shy. It could be someone who's very personal or very sly. It also suggests that the subject is completely aware of being observed.

"I don't know, anywhere."
- The photographer is either very inexperienced that he doesn't know what to do, or he's very confident that he kows he can make it work whatever the model does.

"Let's try a few varations."
- The photographer has been making stock photos for sometime.




*****


XXX

white belt tip - color adjustment

© Joselito Briones

In the latest issue of "Contact Sheet", the newsletter for iStockphoto contributors, a short tip/article I submitted was used:



*****
Color Adjustment
By: attator

Adjusting the colors of an image also changes its actual or perceived luminosity. If it's only the image's color that needs adjusting, this can be done without touching the luminosity (contrast, brightness) by instructing the software to limit the adjustment only to colors. RAW format processors, for example, usually have an option to apply noise reduction only to colors, thereby instantly solving the problem of chroma noise while preserving the texture of the image. In Photoshop, it's also easy enough to duplicate the main layer and assigning the new layer as "color" and do all kinds of color shifts and adjustments to this color layer. Still in Photoshop, just before saving the file in jpeg format, while still in the color layer, a simple localized gradual desaturation can be applied by running repeatedly (as many times as required) an action that goes:

* select - color range - out of gamut (to adjust only colors that are out of bounds, leaving the rest in their full colorful glory)
* select - modify - expand - a few pixels / select - modify - feather - a few pixels (to avoid banding)
* modify - image - desaturate - a few levels down

Repeat as necessary.


*****

Photo above was taken in Miami on a recent trip, I used the above process to push it to maximum saturation without going out of gamut.

XXX