A Team.
You’ll often hear me refer to a team or crew, and obviously it’s a group of people I work with, but maybe I should point out how tantamount they are. A huge part to doing an effective fashion shoot is coordinating and communicating with your team to realize an idea. I’m talking about stylists, hair, make-up, models, assistants, techs, retouchers, set-designers, everyone. They’re all important and contribute to the outcome. If collaboration is not something you’re into, okay, but then you need to include a good producer in that list too. To burst all the photographer as artiste egos out there: releasing a shutter turns out to be a minor part of it all.
Every photographer is different, but I think there’s something to be said about a small team, say 6 people on set tops. Once you start to get more than that distractions are too naturally occurring (hence closed sets, or to send everyone away except the model when shooting). Sure, I long at hearing the tales of the intimate shoots of Helmut Newton with one assistant and a naked model, or of Penn shooting models who would have done all their own hair, m.u., and styling, but you can have a lot of fun with a good crew of people, and moreover, if you allow an open creative dialogue amongst the group amazing work can come about.
Anyway, this probably boring rambling came about when I found this picture in my temp folder:
photo: Sarah Potempa and I, Sarah’s Apt in Chelsea, Halloween 2006
It is me and my favorite hairstylist the world over, Sarah Potempa (w/ the wall group) on Halloween. She is always the #1 call for hair on my shoots. Give me her and Meredith Baraf (also w/ the wall group), and pow, it’s on. The problem is, when you’re as good as they are, you work ALL THE TIME, so it can make it tricky for them to be had.
This is a shot we all did together:
photo: model test in J. Mendel gown, photographer’s studio, ©Graeme Mitchell, 2005