With many types of photography (studio and art photography particularly come to mind) the value of pre-visualisation and pre-production is enormous. Many photographers starting out don’t spend enough time on the preparation side of a shoot, and it’s often in that prep work that the value of a photograph is decided.

As a photogrpahy teacher, too many times (way too many times) I have seen students come into the studio with basically no preparation at all. They know what their subject is, and they have their camera with them, but that’s as far as it goes. What I’m talking about is at a totally different level. I’m talking about someone coming in to the studio with their props, their lighting plan, their colour scheme worked out, and their shooting tech sorted – like what f stop they’ll be shooting at, what lens they will be using, and basically having the finished shot in their minds eye, so they can walk in, set up the lights, props and the model, shoot it, and get close to what they had envisaged.

That’s at the heart of it – envisioning a shot. Pre-visualising it. Seeing it in your head. Seeing the colours, the lighting, the pose, the mood, the props… all that. The closer you can get to what you WANT to shoot BEFORE you shoot it, the closer you will get to the desired result. And that result will be about 10 times better than a shot taken just trying your luck in the studio. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room in the studio for experimentation or serendipity. There are always lots of things to be discovered in the studio by trying different things. But what I’m talking about is having a plan before you start to shoot.


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The Pre-Visualisation of Mister Cricket

Let’s look at a particular shoot and analyse what sort of pre-visualisation and pre-production went into it, and why and how it helped the overall success of the shot.

The shots above are from I took recently of my boy, Eddie, in his cricket gear. It was originally inspired by a photo I saw (a close up of lips with hundreds and thousands on them – thanks Hannah). One day it dawned on me that hundreds and thousands would be a good way to tie in the concept of “junior cricket” to the shot. Anyone who knows anything about cricket knows cricketers often wear zinc on their lips and under their eyes (they are out in the sun all day). So hundreds and thousands in place of the zinc – hey presto – a great little prop to tie the concept in.

That was the start – the idea. Then I started imaging how I was going to light it. I know he would be wearing his whites, so I started by thinking about contrast and visual impact. I ended up deciding on a blue background to give good contrast to the clothes and his blond hair. I also wanted a gradient in the background so I had to figure out how to achieve that. Then I thought about how to light the subject itself. I knew that for some shots he would be wearing his cricket helmet, and so this led me to thinking of lighting that would get in under the helmet. I also wanted the lighting to reflect the mood of the shot. Low key contrasty lighting seemed to me the wrong approach so I went with a frontal beauty light style, a type of light that would get in under the helmet and also give that bright and youthful, energetic mood I was chasing. It was also a good choice to clearly light the hundreds and thousands. They had to be an obvious key point in the shot. Also thinking of the lighting, I knew a way to make the catch lights be dominant in the lower half of his eyes, without it looking like the lighting was dominantly coming from below.

Finally, I thought about the posing and props. I knew the back of his bat was red and the handle green, and I’d decided on blue for the background. Then I had the opportunity to buy him new batting gloves for his birthday the week before, and so I looked at the colours available and ended up going with the green ones to match the green of the bat. Seems like a lot of colours, but in my mind I could see the dominant colours would be white and blue, with red and green accents. RGB anyone? Primary colours and a good combination.

So on the day, I set up the lights, first the background, and then the front lights. I didn’t use a light meter at all (shame on me I know) but I’m familiar with the studio lights and I hardly even had to tweak the lights from their initial settings. This was also because I’d thought about my camera settings and had already decided I would shoot at 1/125th, f8 @ 100ISO. The important figure there obviously is the f8. That would give me my lens’ sweet spot as far as sharpness went and also give me enough depth of field to carry my model. I’d also set the lights based on this setting and got it close to right the first time because I knew what sort of output I’d need from them to get f8.

So when I’d set the lights up, the next step was to introduce the model. He stepped into the frame, and the very first shot looked just like this. Well it was very different in some ways (he had his helmet on), but what struck me when I looked at that first image was that all my pre-visualisation and pre-production had paid off and delivered the very image that I had seen in my mind for the previous few weeks of planning. It wasn’t an epiphany or anything, but it was a powerful moment nonetheless.

So if you’re not planning your shots and can’t see them before you take them, start trying to do just that. You might be surprised what lands in your camera! Hit me in the comments if you can tell me how I got the gradient in the background 😉