For creative model shoots, the most important aspect to success may be something entirely overlooked. I’ve always felt during the time I’m making images; I am several degrees less creative than I was when I was planning the shoot at home. Many ideas are forgotten on the day and often the entire theme wanders. With landscape photography the phenomenon is less problematic, but there are some days when the creative mindset is by far the biggest hurdle.
On model photoshoots there is a tendency to default to habitual behaviours, a methodical mindset to try and capture what is remembered of the shoot plan with technical competence. Ideas are forgotten and if a concept didn’t work as well as imagined; It’s a struggle to recover from it.
Rather than accept this situation, hacking creative thinking during the shoot could enable you to up your game. Abandoning usual process and recreating shoots from the ground up. Recently I created a plan on how to approach a photoshoot for maximum creativity. From arriving early to reduce travel fatigue, to getting the models to become more collaborative, all aspects where considered. When I tried to implement this plan during a photoshoot, it become clear that changing behaviours is incredibly challenging. I had forgot to do almost everything I’d planned.
This weekend I thought of a new tactic; prompt cards. Often used to spark creativity, small business sized cards with phrases meant to dig into your creative thinking. Rather than use some form of pre-made cards I decided to experiment with ideas and notes specific to help my own photography. In effect the cards form the structure for a photoshoot and how to tackle it creatively. I decided to break notes down into 4 main areas.
This is about de-stressing, grounding yourself, getting into a mood appropriate for creative thinking, warming up.
The first hurdle in my own shoots is finding scenes on a location shoot to provide the backdrop. These notes help to carry on the warmup exercises whilst starting to think more about the location
This is a mixture of prompts to keep creative and technical considerations on composition on technique. The prompts are designed to avoid dud shots and see the image in a more considered way with a level head. The shoot notes also serve to remind of the main themes.
This is where full creative thinking is encouraged, whilst “the shoot” notes can be a bit clinical, digging deeper makes you consider the possibilities of destroying your allegiance to your last shot and totally rethinking it. These notes are designed to get you away from your initial ideas and totally rework concepts with less emphasis on technical reminders.
So far I’ve created my first “minimum viable product” of prompt cards. Perhaps some prompts make more sense than others, but they’re easy enough to refine over the next few weeks. Hopefully on my next shoot I finally start to break out of my methodical uncreative mindset.
