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Mike Stacey
Mike Stacey

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Portraiture with Depth 3: Movement and Timing

Some time around 2016 or 2017 I began shooting video. I wanted to capture all the small nuances in the subject's expressions - the moments I was missing with the stills I was getting…

When editing the videos I could see SO MANY amazing stills that I wasn’t capturing with my stills photography…

I thought all I had to do to get stills like this was to get the model to move, and move naturally while I cherry picked the shots. Not as easy as it sounds, but that formed the basis of the way I shoot to this day - model is moving and so am I moving with them, looking, hunting, for the expressions that mirror ME and the way that I THINK or FEEL. This means having good timing which is something I mentioned in the last article "Portraiture with Depth 2: Recognising self in the subject"....

"This is the crucial part. Inside, you are centred and cognisant of your feelings and how they might intersect with those of the subject. You are like a hunter, hunting for the moment in which to hit the shutter. Hitting the shutter is only triggered by some kind of realisation from inside yourself. This is the magic part that no words can illuminate and it will be different for every photographer but if you're true to yourself then your images will reflect something about you and have some depth about them."

The video is here and I cut it to show some video screenshots which demonstrate what I'm talking about.

To find the whole series of these Portraiture with Depth articles, just hit the tag 'portraiture with depth'.

Portraiture with Depth 3: Movement and Timing

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