Fauxtography- 99% Prep Work and 1% Being There
If you build it, they will come, right? Well, the more prep work you can put behind what you’re building, the easier the chances for success.
I am always so proud of the work we do at Hunt’s Photo Education because I know how hard my team is always working behind the scenes. If someone isn’t doing that prep work, it becomes very evident very quickly, and when it does happen, we never want that sort of thing to happen again. So, here’s a short tale of what can go wrong when you don’t prep!
For the past two years, I have led an annual Star Wars Cosplay Workshop. I’ve made friends with several folks in a local cosplay group—the 501st New England Garrison. Members in this group cosplay as Star Wars characters for baseball games, visits to schools and children’s hospitals, and other local events. I’ve worked with them to come to our portrait workshops, which is a real win-win—We get cool models, they get cool portraits. In the past, we’ve had Storm Troopers, Tie Fighter Pilots, two Princess Leias, one Kylo Ren, a few Mandalorians, and miscellaneous Jedi, Sith, and other characters you may or may not have heard of.
For one reason or another, this year was a bit more challenging. Coming at the end of Massachusetts school vacation, our workshop intersected with other events that caused scheduling conflicts with the cosplayers. For this one, I had to dig a little deeper to find other cosplayers.
As is usual, I came in a day early to set up. I grabbed lights, backgrounds, props, and all the accoutrements for a portrait workshop. I double checked with all the models to verify their attendance. I wanted to make sure (as I usually do) that everything was ready to go!
Light can make or break an image. At the start of the workshop, I turned on a background light and my subject turned on his lightsaber. Amazingly, that’s all that was needed to create an amazing light. That was a happy accident, and I love those because it makes me look smart and creative!
The workshop was running smoothly for the first couple hours, at which point I decided to change it up. I had co-led a workshop a few weeks prior on “dragging the shutter” (using LED and flash to create movement in shots), so I thought it would be a good idea to try that out. However, I hadn’t really prepped for this element. I knew the basic structure of what I was planning to do, but I hadn’t really planned how I was going to execute the shots. Specifically, I didn’t create the test shots the day before, which I normally would have. But I had faith that I could “wing it” and figure it out.
It goes without saying that this was a mistake. My brain was tired from the week leading up to the workshop (did I mention it was school vacation week?) and I couldn’t get the settings or the light positioning or the LED power exactly what I was supposed to. I was later told by my co-worker that I accidentally set my flash to “rear curtain” vs. “front curtain” sync, resulting in shots that looked…not very good.
I was thoroughly embarrassed and it came across very quickly that this was not going to work. Thankfully, as a group we decided never to speak of that failure again and moved on to bigger and better lighting!
I think we can all remember a time that we didn’t prep enough and that this can be an extremely helpful element in improving your photography. That’s not to say you can’t just wander out into the world with a camera in hand and take pictures, but if you have a goal in mind, that level of preparation will lead to such a greater level of success.
Or, as greater minds have said, “if you choose the quick and easy path”, that will lead to the dark side.
