One of the things we've learned is the importance of shoot-planning. The ability to plan out all of the images you need and all of the images you want, and structuring them in a very specific way that makes sense and lets the shoot flow in an organized way from the first shot to the last. It's actually a great thing that seriously helps your time management on a shoot, especially when you have limited time with a model or at a location.
When shooting kids, however, it's a different story all together. Last week, I shot four little boys, aged 3, 4, 5, and 6. The brief was "Dirty Children" and I was supposed to aim for funny images, and ones that you might see on a laundry powder ad. Initially, I shot a little boy and a little girl, who must have been the cleanest children on the face of the planet. They did NOT want to paint with their hands, did NOT want to get any mud on their clothes, and were only too happy to run to the sink to clean it off when they did. The four little boys, however, were only too pleased to jump right into it.
Under the advice of one of my fellow students, rather than following my shoot plan, I set up "stations". There was a painting station, a baking station, and an outdoor mud station. The very detailed three-paged shoot plan that I had prepared stayed in my bag for the entire shoot. There was no controlling these little monkeys. Whatever happened at each station was almost completely out of my control, and things escalated quickly. It got messy.
The boys had poured 6 bottles of multi-coloured paint all over the floor, and it went from finger painting, to having a full-on slip-and-slide on the living room floor, leaving blue, red, green, and yellow streaks spread out across every inch of the floor and all over the boys' clothing.
Bringing the boys outside was an even bigger challenge in model direction. Mud and a soccer ball made it nearly impossible for me to give any kind of instruction. Luckily, with the very short moments of attention the boys gave me, and me shooting like mad the rest of the time, I did end up getting some very cute, laundry-detergent worthy shots.
I was told that the boys returned home to their parents with all kinds of mess-making stories, and that they slept incredibly well that night. A day of adults actually encouraging kids to get messy and play in the mud--isn't that every little boy's dream come true?
Images copyright Yuri Arcurs
