An Update On Pre-Visualization

An Update On Previsualization

by William Lulow

The other day I had some professional headshots to do for a company called POCStock, which is a stock photo agency specializing in “people of color.” As such, I fully expected these executives to be African-American. They were not. They were a brother-sister team that had both signed on to the company in different capacities. I did, however, have a pre-conceived notion of what I wanted the images to look like. They had sent me a “headshot information sheet,” ahead of time so I knew what the background should look like and how I wanted to place them on it. When they actually showed up and they were caucasian, the shots kind of suddenly  materialized in front of my eyes. One light was all it took. Even though I had other lights set up as well, the natural fall off from my big main light umbrella was just right to give the background an “off-white” look. Here’s one of them:

I have often spoken of lighting the background for most shots if you want it to be the color of the set paper, for example. In this case, NOT lighting it produced the right shade of gray. I knew that it would reproduce this way, so I just turned off the other lights. I had pre-visualized what I wanted these shots to look like and the technique made them come out just the way I intended. It’s kind of a good feeling to be able to do this, to visualize in your mind what you want an image to look like and then to be able to create it just that way.

This is a lighting diagram for what this kind of lighting normally is:

For this particular job, I didn’t need the fill-in light to the right of the camera and I also chose not to use the background lights because I was expecting the light from the mainlight umbrella to fall off just enough to render the background a pleasing light gray or off-white shade. But remember, if you want the background to reproduce a specific color, it needs to be lit separately!

Here’s the other shot we were aiming for during this shoot:

Pre-visualization is not simply the notion of conjuring up an image and then making your photographic efforts resemble what’s in your mind, it also encompasses the idea of what you want the prints themselves, to look like. It also involves setting a “mood” for the images so that they convey your thoughts. Here’s an image I have shown before, but it is a good example of how a photograph can elicit certain feelings:

A couple of years ago, we got to the spot where we like to spend some time during the winter, Longboat Key, Florida. I knew the weather that day wasn’t going to be ideal, but I walked out on to the beach anyway and this was what I saw. The umbrellas were all tied down so as not to blow away in a storm, the clouds were stormy and the Gulf of Mexico’s waters were churning and creating large waves. I immediately saw the clouds as being ominous and thought that I would make an image that conveyed my sense of dismay at the bad weather. Even though the clouds didn’t exactly look like this while I was standing there, I thought that with a little help from post-production, I could make a dramatic shot. This is what I am getting at when I speak of pre-visualization. It’s more the idea of seeing and image that you might want to make and then using your knowledge and digital technology these days, making the picture come out to look close to what your idea was. Here’s yet another one:

I was walking on another beach, this time in Kauai, Hawaii when I came upon this beach scene with a couple walking hand-in-hand. The only problem was that there were a lot of other people in the water and elsewhere on the beach. But I knew that with a little retouching, I could eliminate them and be left with the couple on a semi-deserted beach. If you look carefully you can probably find the spots where I retouched the other people out. I was left with exactly the kind of shot I was hoping for.