The Enigma of a First Time Shoot

Sometimes music and the viewing of music videos can help invigorate a model and photographer for a great shoot, especially when there is more music than words, as in the style of Enigma’s The Principals of Lust. Music also helps relax the model and photographer during their first shoot, especially if they’ve never met beforehand and their personalities are mysteries to each other.

Enigma itself is a word with Greek roots that means mysterious and ambiguous and also is used to name a machine that creates ciphers for the encryption and decryption of secret messages before and during World War II. While the machine was used commercially, as early as the 1920’s, many nations utilized the enigma machine for their government and military branches, including Nazi Germany that used the Wehrmacht Enigma Machine.

While the musical group Enigma is no war machine, its music is often a mystery to many, as Michael Cretu their group leader states in Enigma’s Virgin Records (Germany) bio, “No words can explain music, music explains itself." Cretu is steadfast to his philosophy that the Enigma type of music should not be tied to any one artist or even one language.

Photography should be similar, it should not be tied to anyone style, artist, or genre, not if you’re planning on being successful in your photographic abilities when working with a new model for the first time. Personalities vary and great photographers know how to adapt to various personalities. Herein is where music can save the day, by relaxing a new, nervous model and helping a photographer focus on a successful shoot and not a cryptic mystery.

Glamorous

While I personally prefer listening to country music, most models today listen to various types of music, including the more hip music. While conducting my Virgin Islands workshops, we have the ability to plug-in an I-Pod, or in my case, my I-Phone, which has caused me to download songs from I-Tunes, more in tune with the younger model crowd

I often use music to get my creative juices flowing, whether writing articles or books, or when photographing models on location, especially in the Virgin Island, Glamour, Beauty and the Nude workshops. I tend to choose music that will relax the models and get them moving and with glamour photography, one song that seems to get the models, and even me, flowing, is the song by Fergie called Glamorous.

I’ve included the song below for your listening. Try songs like these and other hip songs and you’ll be surprised how it will liven up the set on location with your model and if you have them, assistants too. It seems the right music will get the energy flowing, and when people are physically tired or fresh out of ideas, songs like Glamorous will seem to bring everything to life. So it’s appropriate for the current blog pick, Glamorous. Go ahead, give it a try, play it on your next shoot and see how everything will synergize and come to life. Enjoy! rg sends!

Music is Family to Photography

It’s been a while, as I’ve been on the road and handling some family issues with my ill parents and more. But I wanted to finally get something posted on my blog, so I decided to make it simple–photography and music do go along sometimes.

People often ask me what does it take to take a photograph instead of a picture? The answer is simple, passion! Without passion you have nothing. In fact, you can have passion without love, but you can’t have love without passion.

With that said, sometimes I get my inspiration for photography through music, as next to photography music is my next love. Back in my younger, and I mean quite a few years ago, I used to play around with the acoustic guitar and someday I hope to strum the strings again-.-feather-lights though, and if you’re a guitar player you’ll know what I mean by that as it’s all in the fingers.

I think music is important in a shoot, one to relax the model, two to get the photographer’s creative juices flowing. To give you an idea, here’s a song that always comes to my mind and can get you in the right state of mind creatively, especially when photographing blue eyes, “Must be Doing Something Right” (click to see music video on YouTube or see video below) by Billy Currington. Next time you photograph someone, try it, plug your I-Pod in and let the music play, just make sure and keep the volume sensible so you can hear your mind create, after all, music is part of the creative family. Thanks, and God bless our troops, their families and friends, rg sends!