– Posted by Mark
Hey. We’ve been spending a lot of time in the river lately. The mighty Chattahoochee! IDK. It’s kind of fun for me since I’m from Phoenix and we only ever had one river. The Salt River. Seriously. The Salt River. WHAT TYPE OF NAME IS THAT FOR A RIVER.
That’s like ‘The Water River’. No. It’s worse because The Salt River wasn’t really a river salt, it was still a river of… water. LAME. I will admit that at least the fecal count in the Salt River was always impressively high… and I suppose it was cool to float through the desert on an inner tube in 115 degree heat. Alright. The Salt River was kind of fun.
Anyways. River. We’ve been spending a lot of time there lately with the interns and even a few clients. This time we brought along Alumni Intern Brittany, and a few other models – including current Intern Mishaun’s younger cousin. On my last visit to the river, the water level was pretty low and we could walk all the way out to the middle without dying. It was so low that we made everyone lie down on their backs. See:
This time – it was really deep – and it had a pretty good current going. OH. And did I mention there were snakes? Well, snake. Just one. But you know – when you’re waist deep in water and all of a sudden a snake swims past you… you might freak out. Which is what we all kind of did. Brittany got out of the water… and I waited a little while before I asked her to get back in… Because damn – we were there to shoot and I wasn’t done!
Was it cold? YES. Were the models cold? YES. What did we do? We made them really GET IN the river. None of this ‘posing by the river stuff’. If you know us – our models are going under and coming back up. Not only that – but our cameras are going to be sitting right at the water level because that’s where you should put your camera anytime you’re shooting with a body of water. Everything else is for tourists.
Did I mention how cold it was?
Now – a week or two earlier, a few Interns went on their own to shoot at this same location. They had been at the first shoot when the water level was pretty low – but now all of a sudden the water was waist deep. For anyone – this can really screw up all of your plans for whatever shots you had in mind. I kind of felt the same way when I first arrive and saw how high the water was.
I felt like the first group kind of let the conditions beat them. I wasn’t going to let that happen – in fact I couldn’t. Because I’m not about to waste 3 hours of shoot time just because of A LOT OF WATER and some snakes. (Snake.) So. And you know what? It’s a great thing that the conditions were completely different from that first time at the river. Because I made completely different photos.
Remember our Improv entry? It’s not what you’re stuck with – it’s what you’re given.
One more thing – it makes a big difference if you’re working with models who’ll do what it takes for the shot. You know – models that’ll get in a cold river and stay there for half an hour. Even with snakes. Of course – it’s also the photographer’s job to make them believe that the shots are ‘worth it’ – and I’m not saying that I didn’t keep yelling out ‘OMG This shot is AMAZING!’ over and over again just so that the models would stay in the water longer…
We have one more river session scheduled. We’ll see what we make from that one…
