When I photographed Vania 2 months back in one image that sort of accidentally evoked a classic Hollywood look, it made me look into the real 30s Hollywood glamour shots, espeically those of George Hurrell. Flash forward and I have my first honest-to-gosh glamorous images and collaberation between the model, hair and makeup artists, shot full studio style.
That was the starting point, anyways. Apeing the style of a master can be a good educational excercise, but you end up with stuff lacking in a personal vision. Part of our shoot combined the kind of Hurrell butterfly lighting with a more recent technique of "through the viewfinder" images where digital shots are taken through the viewfinder of a nasty old camera, usually a medium format camera. I only have my 4x5 these days so that's what we went through... kind of adds a meta-dimension to the photo, kind of like a story about stories, it becomes an image about images.
Magnifiers and mirror distortions were used a lot in the 20s and 30s along with more surrealist/ dadaist photo artists like Andres Kertesz and Man Ray.
Now, the studio is great when you own the gear and know everything you can do with it, but there's something claustrophobic about studios when you are used to shooting outdoors all the time-- not to mention fighting all the studio lighting for control. A lot of people like outdoor work simply because they like the lack of control. I also like the chance circumstances of the outdoors, but fresh air and open space and backgrounds that have interesting stuff are highly conducive to creativity.
It's exciting to start with a seed of an idea and pursue a bunch of avenues in the span of a 3 hour shoot, let each idea lead to the next instead of being so stuck on an original idea that it gets throttled in the cradle. Might avoid the studio in the future but most definitely I will try and work a hair and makeup artist team into future shoots.
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