No one wants to look bad in any photo, let alone one that will be posted on a stock photography website, for the entire world wide web to see. It’s only natural to want to look your best in an image that freezes a moment in time. No one wants to look bad in a photo. Ever.
That being said, I never cease to be amazed by what people are willing to do for me as a photographer. From models, to friends, to people I have never even met! It’s one thing to be a model, being paid to take directions from the photographer, and being instructed to look a way that is not necessarily their best in a photo. But it’s an entirely different thing when you ask your friends to pose for you in any way other than a natural stock-y smile!
One of my recent assignment briefs was to take photo-journalistic style images of crying people at a funeral. The brief dictated that I was to show everything from mild to total devastation.
After organizing to shoot at a cathedral one morning, I arranged to meet one of my really good friends and a few new friends I had only recently met. I had explained to them the brief in an email, neglecting to mention the part about needing to show “total devastation”. I figured that would surely scare away anyone offering to help me out by modelling for me. I think I sugar-coated it by saying I would need to show “different levels of emotional strength and sadness”. That sounds pretty good, right?
I’m still unsure of how exactly it happened, but these friends of mine, who I know to be upbeat people with amazing senses of humour, gave me everything I needed—from exactly mild to total devastation! By the end of the shoot, everyone was feeling completely emotionally drained. Acting devastated can actually make you feel devastated. (Side note: there must be some life lesson hidden in this: that if you’re ever feeling down and force yourself to act happy, you will actually truly feel happy!)
When I presented the photos in front of the office of around 60 people, there was dead silence. It was a little nerve-wracking at the time, but I supposed that was the desired reaction: gut-wrenching photos that make you feel something: sadness, hurt, helplessness, and even hopefulness…
Part of the same brief was to photograph two people visiting a graveyard and laying flowers on the grave. I thought it would make for powerful images if I chose a mother and a daughter showing the storyline of visiting the grave of a husband/father. However, having just moved to Cape Town, my circle of friends consists of colleagues and my ultimate frisbee teammates. You can imagine that I haven’t befriended many young children. But through the helpfulness of one of my teammates, I was put in contact with a beautiful mother and her gorgeous 4-year-old daughter who were willing to help me out with my assignment.
We sent emails back and forth, arranging times and locations and wardrobe. The night before the shoot, I received an email saying that the young girl’s dad would be coming along to the shoot, because he wasn’t too keen on the idea of his little girl and her mom going to meet two complete strangers in a graveyard! I shared this story with the colleague who would be assisting me on the shoot, and we both just stopped and laughed at the realization that the situation hadn’t seemed strange until that moment! But of course! What sane parent would want to take their little girl to meet an unknown photographer and assistant in a graveyard?! It just reinforces my amazement at the kindness and trust of people, and at the fact that the helpfulness of word-of-mouth and being a friend-of-a-friend is often overlooked.
We ended up meeting in the graveyard, and despite the beautiful little girl being as stubborn as anything, when she did decide to turn on her charm, she really turned it on—don’t you think?
Photos copyright Yuri Arcurs
