Do Process: The Benefits of Being Transparent with Your Creative Process
I've been thinking for months now how to dive deeper within myself to reflect in my art and how to really go about it. With that, I have asked myself a range of questions, tried to step out of myself to really see other's perspective and really just allowed myself the space to remain honest about my process. At the beginning of it, I realized that I didn't really know where to start or what to ask myself in order to supply answers that would allow me to dive deeper, so I started first by asking other people.
One of the biggest questions I receive from my audience is, "why women?", and to me the answer is obvious; women are the best protagonists. I won't go too deeply into this specific portion of my process but at the core of it my reasoning is simple, women wear their hearts on their sleeves. Whether up or down, good or bad, the emotion felt in a single moment can either fill a room with joy or deflate the energy in a matter of seconds and that is a trait in women that I find extremely fascinating. It is probably due to the fact that Black men in America are raised with an emotional curfew; so witnessing an embrace of emotional freedom, in contrast, is like being immersed in a Bengali wedding ceremony, foreign to my eyes but oh so interesting. When it comes to women, beauty is a given and intelligence is underrated but my main reasoning is their ability to wield energy and emotion like a samurai wields his katana, with cutting precision.
If you were to look back towards the beginning of my artistic journey, I have always been attracted to the mood and spirit of an image. From the lighting and setting to the outfit and props, every component added contributes to how an image feels. That attraction has bled into the photographers that I'm drawn to for inspiration as well, how a photographer is able to tap into a subject and their emotions through a photo is an indicator of the sign of their artistic prowess.
Peter Lindbergh, a long-time Vogue shooter, is a big influence on the way I frame and edit my photos; he's a perfect example of a photographer pulling emotion out of a subject and the main protagonists in his art are women as well. With that similarity in common, the biggest thing I appreciate about Lindbergh is his ability to not only respect women but also maintain integrity in his creative process, which is evidently reflected in the comfortability of the women in his work. Lindbergh establishes trust with his subjects by being transparent, a learned skill that most of the greats have seemed to master. Platon Antoniou is another example of an artist that benefits from upholding integrity in his craft, and his clientele is a clear sign of his ability to be transparent without compromising respect.
Being transparent with your creative process is something that I have seen a lot of photographers struggle with, at what I perceive to be a detriment. Being transparent with how integral each part is in creating a quality image plays a vital part in establishing value, more than I think we realize. The more intricate and tedious a craft seems the more likely a paying client is to acknowledge the expertise needed to perform at a high level. If you look at it from a craft perspective, we lose out on owning the expertise of our craft by keeping the process a mystery. Take a carpenter, for example, seeing how much time and effort goes into building a house from the ground up or even something like renovating a room is revered as a skill that deserves recognition and the paycheck to go along with it. Holding ownership over your craft allows potential clients to understand the difficulty of what we do and as a result establish us as professionals.
Disclaimer : My observations on this topic have come from an experience in dealing with a client or in talking with shooters that have been at it longer than myself, with more expertise. In no means am I claiming to be the most professional voice in the craft, just being transparent with what I have learned thus far in my journey.
The other benefit of transparency comes when dealing with subjects in front of the camera. The better you are at talking them through your process, the more they will lean towards your expertise. It’s up to us as people of the craft to deliver a high-quality experience for established and potential customers. I usually start with a mood board, just to keep clients open to the possibilities of what we can create together. The mood board process tends to be the piece that builds anticipation in the process for the actual shoot and so far, has worked well especially with return customers. What I hope to accomplish with this portion is creating an expectation of quality, while also bringing life to any idea they have and eliminate any confusion between us. You want your client to be able to envision your thought process but more than anything, you want them to envision themselves or their product through your eyes.
Funny enough, Zola and I used to debate on why I would always push to have a mood board present for every idea, which is only funny because of where we both have risen in our crafts. The first time we shot, I was still learning photography as a craft, from my camera down to how to create in unison with the models that I work with and she was very new to the editorial/ catalog modeling process as well. I can honestly say that a lot of my growth has been due to things I’ve learned throughout the years of working with her and being pushed to create images that can stand up to par with anyone else’s of her. And at the pace she is growing, the same will be said for years to come in order to keep up. Like I mentioned earlier, my goal is to bring emotion and feeling out of every image and pushing her to be more vulnerable in shoots with me and less a caricature of what a model is supposed to be, is my constant challenge and I believe each shoot, we get closer to hitting the mark.
For this specific shoot, as you can see in the mood board snapshot, was to channel one of my favorite energies on camera, Lisa Bonet. In every image I have seen of Lisa, she seems to be so in tune with herself that her in-life presence is exuded throughout the image she portrays. If you take a look at an image of her, especially from the 90s, her facial expressions, body language and the nuance behind her eyes do an amazing job of speaking without using words. I always feel like I can understand the mood she was in while taking the photo, wearing her heart on her sleeve. To bring it full circle, emotion in an image is what excites me. This is not solely exclusive to women but in my current experience, this is largely a skill I have recognized from women in images. I will remain in search of emotion through images because, for me, that is what I am here to do as a photographer, remove the illusion of perfection that the world hides behind.
I will leave the topic with that cliff-hanger because this topic of perfection deserves its own post.