Rolando Gomez

Canoeing down a river involves strength, intelligence and common sense, however, canoeing of the subject’s eyes in photography, though acceptable at times, usually involves poor posing and bad camera angle. Sometimes canoeing in photography is unavoidable, but often canoeing is caused by not paying attention to detail in an image—photographers sometimes forget the eyes are the storytellers of the image.

Most canoeing is caused when the camera angle is high in relation to the subject’s pose. This high angle also causes the subject to appear shorter and heavier when simply moving the camera angle down below the model will not only help in eliminating canoeing, but causes the model to look thinner and much lighter.

Sometimes it’s the model that makes the canoeing of her eyes unavoidable in her own images, as sometimes a model will project a pose she feels makes her look sexy, designed more to soothe her self-esteem, but often the pose will appear awkward to the camera itself and it’s up to you the photographer to take the model’s pose and refine it while not negatively affecting her self-esteem.

As an example, models often bury their heads too deep into their chest thinking the pose is sexy and powerful. While the pose of the face lowered with beaming eyes may feel sexy and independent, the photographer must step in and guide the model so her head is properly positioned, otherwise the white’s of the model’s eyes will naturally create canoes underneath the eye’s iris in addition to the possibility of a double chin. While some canoeing is acceptable, too much is normally nixed by editors.

This vast river of white underneath the iris of the eye created by canoeing causes the viewer’s eye to always goes to the whitest part of the image, or the model’s eyes verses the model and photo in its entirety, thus possibly losing the intended message of the image to the viewer. Sometimes, where editors will overlook this, is when the image is more “face” than body, thus the eyes are the true storytellers here and canoeing is acceptable.

Sometimes it’s a toss-up, as the irises, especially the blue, gray, green and silver colored ones are more powerful than white, concave stripes. It’s these type of critically edited images that reveal strong eyes with a subliminal message of confidence from the subject, after all, the eyes are the direct channel to the heart.

Ultimately, the eyes are the storytellers of the image and often your subject’s personality, just like the strongly-focused eyes of a rower down a swiftly moving river that show skillful steering of their canoe, the eyes will navigate your thoughts when viewing a great photograph. All the best, rg sends!