I contacted Will to offer him my services with the intention of providing interesting, fresh promotional material. Apart from being a big fan of his act (having seen him twice at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London), I was looking at the standard of promo material for stand up comedians and have noticed just how...samey it all is. Even the biggest names mostly have fairly uninspiring images of them looking suprised with a white background, often taken from a higher angle (not sure why this means "comedy").
My personal opinion is that, if you are a stand up comedian, you want to show everyone why you are different from other stand ups, and why you stand out. Having a distinctive character, personality and style of comedy is what the most successful comics spend time building up; they become a brand. To pick a handful; Jack Dee – curmudgeonly wit, Lee Evans – visual, physical comedy used as a vehicle to deliver observational comedy, Tim Key - pretend poet with clever, intentionally bad poetry, Stewart Lee – being Stewart Lee (i.e. uncategorisable postmodern genius).
A Google image search of a dozen or so stand up comedians gave me pretty much the same images throughout; you could swap the heads around on the pictures and nobody would be able to tell you which ones had been altered. A nice exception to the rule was Bill Hicks – although that might have something to do with the ridiculous amount of charisma he had. I don't pretend to be an authority on stand up comedy but from my point of view as a photographer, eye catching, relevant photography is a useful tool for your customer to promote themselves.
Which brings me to my shoot with Will. I won't spoil what happens in his act but one of the elements of Will's act centres around him playing a character who is massively nervous. He frantically ploughs through a selection of cue cards, throwing them away as he scrambles for the next joke, hoping he can make the crowd laugh. The cards are a great visual addition and tie that part of the act together wonderfully; they make his panic all the more palpable as yet another cue card goes fluttering across the stage. As a result, and in the spirit of keeping the images simple yet strong, I also tied the theme of the shoot around these cards.
My approach for the shoot was to keep this central theme in mind and have only a handful of pre-planned ideas. This would give us several starting points which would then evolve naturally as the shoot progressed. I encourage whoever I'm shooting to build on the ideas with me. In a shoot like this, the input of your subject is very important - combining what you know about photography and what they know about their craft allows you to produce more relevant and interesting images.
Here are a handful of the final images (click for larger)
Will is a brilliant stand up and I feel he deserves shots that do justice to the quality and originality of his act. I'm on a bit of a mission now to provide more interesting promo material to comedians with real talent like Will, to help them further stand out from the crowd. I want to grab the attention of the casual customer because, in a leaflet full of identikit comedians, it pays to stand out.
My second shoot was an addition to an ongoing personal project of mine, to be completed in the year of 201X. With this project, there is no planning involved in relation to pose or expression. I only plan the colours and (literal, not thematic) tone of the images. I don't want to give too much away, but everyone I shoot for this project is either a friend who means something to me, a family member, or other such person who holds some kind of influence in my life. As a result, I tend not to pose these people. My intention is to make taking their photo as unobtrusive and natural an element of the day as possible. It's not a case of "right, let's take your photo, stand like this, look over there, give me wistful", it's a case of "wanna hang out tomorrow? Cool, I'll be doing your portrait so I'll bring the camera".
It's a great way of undertaking portraiture, because the process takes on a life of its own. The camera takes on the role of mere observer – whatever happens is recorded. This is one reason why the best candid street photography is so powerful and exciting. I'm not saying this is what I've achieved here, because the subject is obviously aware of being photographed. However, my aim is to bring the portraiture in this project as close to this aesthetic as possible.
My second shoot was an addition to an ongoing personal project of mine, to be completed in the year of 201X. With this project, there is no planning involved in relation to pose or expression. I only plan the colours and (literal, not thematic) tone of the images. I don't want to give too much away, but everyone I shoot for this project is either a friend who means something to me, a family member, or other such person who holds some kind of influence in my life. As a result, I tend not to pose these people. My intention is to make taking their photo as unobtrusive and natural an element of the day as possible. It's not a case of "right, let's take your photo, stand like this, look over there, give me wistful", it's a case of "wanna hang out tomorrow? Cool, I'll be doing your portrait so I'll bring the camera".
It's a great way of undertaking portraiture, because the process takes on a life of its own. The camera takes on the role of mere observer – whatever happens is recorded. This is one reason why the best candid street photography is so powerful and exciting. I'm not saying this is what I've achieved here, because the subject is obviously aware of being photographed. However, my aim is to bring the portraiture in this project as close to this aesthetic as possible.
How did I do?
I've no idea whether you're now throwing flowers or rotten veg at your monitor, but as long as you're throwing something, I'm happy. Quick note - probably best to not throw things at your computer, regardless of how much you love or hate the photos. Not sure what you'd throw at the screen if you were indifferent to them – perhaps some lint? If so, I reckon it's safe to throw a bit of lint.
As always, thanks for reading. I hope to keep the posts a little more frequent from now on (promises, promises). I'll be popping one up once Issue 100 of GamesTM comes out, where I'll bring you two portraiture sessions from two names that will hugely excite the videogame nerds amongst us. For now, get off the Internet and go do something useful.
For more images and info, be sure to visit www.garethdutton.com
No comments:
Post a Comment