How to make your photos more engaging
One of the questions that I get asked all of the time is: “How do I make people connect with my work more?” Bringing your images alive can feel daunting - it's difficult! But I'm hoping that I can give you a few quick tips today.
Play with Depth of Field + Foreground:
The image to the left is a really good example of this. I deliberately placed the tree in the foreground of this shot. This is a technique that you see a lot of documentary photographers do, because it makes the viewer feel like they're seeing something that they shouldn't be seeing, or that the subject isn't aware of them there. It's quite “voyeuristic." I love doing this in my work. Try it yourself!
Give Your Model an Action:
Instead of giving your model a standard, static pose to hold, why not ask her to do an action? I love to get my models to walk and laugh, spin and smile, bring movement into their clothing.
Be Harmonious with Colour:
A really quick and simple way to draw a viewer in and create a pleasing image is to keep all of your colours harmonious. For example, sticking to just blue's and whites. Or just pink tones. Or looking at complimentary colours.
Plan A Storyline:
I talk a lot about storytelling, and it's for good reason. I love to create fictional tales before my shoots, and have been known to write short stories. This forms a real character in my mind, and I can relay that character to my model. Then planning shots becomes easy! For example, if the story if about a woman who lives off the land and river she lives by, I can ask myself “What would someone who lives in that environment do? What tools/props would she have?" and before you know it, I've got a prop list, and an idea of poses that I can put my model in. My shoot “By The River” for ELLE Croatia is the perfect example of that.
For the longest time, I resisted planning my shoots and thought that I did better if I just turned up and figured it out on the day.
I'll be honest, the main reason that I didn't plan my shoots was that I didn't know how. I genuinely didn't know what I should be doing, or how to do it.
When I realised that I needed to be more organised on my shoots, and come prepared, I began to learn how to do it, and now have a really robust system that I follow before almost every single shoot that I do - especially any personal work that I create.
Ever since doing all of this work, my work has improved beyond my wildest dreams, and I'm booking clients that I could only have ever dreamt of working with.
I've put everything I know about planning the perfect shoot into an online course called “Storytelling For Success”.
