I am right with you, there are just some photos of me performing that have in the past made me cringe. Sure it may be my resting bitch face, my gurning but mostly its about me seeing my body in what I felt in my own mind to not be the best. So let me break it down to ya’ll how this thing called perspective and perception works. Being that I am also a photographer (www.KhandiePhotography.com and Get us on the old Facebook too) I kinda like to think I may have a little more insight into this….possibly….hopefully.
RIGHT!
Firstly YOU ARE NOT 2 Dimensional. You are a multifaceted surface like a friggin diamond (like the analogy?! Means you can sparkle and are beautiful etc). Therefore a 2D representation of you isnt the full picture. No pun intended…mostly. So when a photographer clicks that shutter they are basically converting your awesome down into another form. Its a fabulous thing but even you know that you cant see the full cake from one photo, you gotta spin that bad boy about to see it all. So why do you think a single photo of you is the same? Thats why you get oodles of photos of a performance. Your photographer knows this!!!
Secondly….think of light as water. I mean it. You are lit from above mostly by stage lights, the sun, my beaming smile etc right? So if the lighting falls down, much like water it will only hit the surfaces it sees. It bounces/flows off of those. This can be beautiful but it can also increase viability on shadows that actually arent as apparent to the eye normally. Your boobs for example: Lit on top beautiful but shadowed underneath. Because light/water cant magically bounce back up and under to illuminate that area under there. So when that photographer snaps that button, it picks up the shadow. The same goes with stomachs, arms, your face, hats etc etc.
Thirdly….where your photographer is positioned is key. Now sadly most of us (I know this as I have covered events myself) are put in set places…chosen by people who perhaps dont always get how that thing called perspective works. If I shoot up towards my subject, I am elongating her, shooting up her nose but also seeing more the shadowy areas as I am working up towards the lights. That means you are gonna see in my camera shots shadows more. Now there are some magic photographic jiggery pokery we can work to decrease that but basically shooting up makes you look taller but shows more bumps, shadows (provided the light is from above).
If we were able to take a step back or to the side, stage side etc we would get another angle. Perhaps the lighting would be softer, less in shadow etc. Shooting from above can make you appear slimmer but also shorter….We have to find that happy medium between them both and sadly we are restricted so often. Hands up photographers who hear me on that!?
Fourthly capturing something in movement is bloody hard work. Did you know that it wasnt until about the Victorian age people thought horses leaped and didnt run? They thought those beautiful beasts sort of lifted all their feet off the ground to move in a run….bat shit. Thankfully some smart arse managed to really capture a horse moving and learnt it wasnt that way at all. Damn it, no flying horses.
Movement is hard to make static. A photographer can not 100% anticipate your next move so cant predict where you will be. Its friggin hard work. So instead of thinking, yuck I look a muppet…think more ‘holy bat balls I rocked that power slide!’. A photo is pushing pause on something that isnt meant to be paused. A performance isnt 100% captured in a single photo frame. Stop thinking of it like that. Your body makes a million and one different motions in a performance. Something they can be paused and you look beautiful/serene and other times you look constipated. Its all part of the awesome of a performance. Honestly. If you want perfectly poised photos, dont move.
Dont be too beaten up by your photos, capturing movement is hard. Lighting and positioning play a bigger role in your images and can actually make things appear larger, smaller, bigger, curvier than they are. A lens is curved, it can also distort the image.
Lastly dont give a hoot in hell about a ‘bad’ photo of an amazing performance. A good photographer would never share a photo they deem bad. They must have liked it for a reason. As photographer we see art in motion, we just get to preserve that perfect memory forever in an image.
