Learning Photography Skills

Learning Photography Skills

by William Lulow

Note: This article is a kind of follow-up on the last blog piece about the famous photographer, Man Ray. I saw a rather extensive exhibit of his work at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond last week and several things became even more evident than they already were about how one goes about learning any craft, but I will relate it to photography because that’s what I do and teach.

When I was intent on learning photography back in 1970 or so, which is when I really decided to devote my life to this profession, I was intrigued by many of the processes and how the really great practitioners made their images. I studied everything from pose, camera angles, types of cameras, various techniques in operating them and of course, light and lighting. My intent was to learn as much as I possibly could about photography, its history, current practices and how great images could be achieved with the technology. I can remember buying copies of Vogue magazine because I was interested in making fashion images. This was not because I had a love of fashion per se, but because I absolutely fell in love with many images created by some of the world’s greatest photographers. Many of those images were made to sell the items themselves, but many were also made to create an interest in fashion in general. I even got to know a bit about how some garments were made after doing some images of a Vionnet skirt made from material cut on the bias. I never even knew what a “bias” was as it related to fabric. One of my first jobs, before I opened my own studio, was photographing catalog fashions for a studio whose biggest client was a firm called Bradlees (later to be taken over by Kmart. So I learned how to make perfect fashion images that were designed to sell the garments themselves.

This was one of my first published covers. I already had pictures published in the Denver Post and various other publications when I lived in Denver, but this was the first one I got when I came back to New York. This cover shot actually landed me my first really big assignment for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. They asked me to do the publicity shots for their Costume Institute’s “Hollywood Show.” This is one of the many images I made for them:

These images were not actual fashion pictures even though the subject matter was clothing. They were more like still-lifes. Because the mannequins didn’t move, I was free to take all the time I needed to create a mood with the lighting for each costume. And, because each costume was different, so was the lighting I used. But, because the subjects have some inherent beauty, so do the photographs.

Now I had never taken a course in fashion photography, nor had I apprenticed with a fashion photographer before this, but, as I said, I studied closely many, many fashion magazines and was able to discern that most of the full-length images were shot from around knee-height. I later discovered that the reason for this is that a low camera angle tends to elongate the body a bit which makes the human form not only look thinner, but it also focuses attention on the way the clothes hang on the human form. Not only did I examine in detail, all the fashion images that photographers like Avedon, Penn, Scavullo and others were doing regularly for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Elle magazines, but every time I could find a film or a lecture that showed how photographers shot fashion pictures, I would go. I looked at the lighting and discovered that if the light was placed high enough, the shadows would fall on the floor, not on the background. I noticed that if the background was lit as well as the subject, you could render it just about any color you wanted. I actually discovered this because I would often set up a white background without lighting it and watched as it turned gray when I developed the pictures.  I watched other photographers shoot catalog fashion pictures and finally got a few jobs assisting these people as well. Most of the time, when you are apprenticing or assisting other photographers, they don’t take the time or trouble to teach you what they are doing and why. But you definitely have the opportunity to see for yourself what works and with a little exploring and research (made much easier today with the advent of the internet and computers), you can get a pretty good idea of what you would need to do to make similar images.

I believe it is also important to teach studio photography or any photography, for that matter, in the studio. Students need to see and experience the studio for themselves. Bringing students into a learning environment is so much better than learning something on YouTube or through a video format because making a video presupposes a camera setup and for that someone has to choose a point-of-view and how much it will encompass. If you are right there in a photographer’s studio, your vision is not limited to what is in front of you. You can see, for instance, how the studio is set up, where things are placed, how they are placed, when they are used and to what purpose. At this point, if the student is really paying attention and is thoroughly immersed in what is happening, the learning proceeds very fast indeed. All this constitutes a kind of “full immersion” into the field to really gain an understanding of what it’s all about.

Some say that certain photographs of fashions are “dated.” The clothes themselves may be “of a certain era” but the images in many cases are timeless. Not only because they show what fashions used to be, but because the images are just beautiful to view.

This is a tryptik of costumes I photographed for Hanes Hosiery back in 1984. Below, another “test” shot for a special background:

As a teacher of photography, it is my job to provide all the information I have learned the hard way, by experimentation and actually trying things for myself, in a way that makes the learning readily accessible and kind of easier to see. But, like anything else you are trying to learn, you have to be willing to put in the time and effort it takes to do the “homework.” As I said, it’s the “immersion” in the craft that affects the learning curve. As I said, I looked at thousands of magazines and thousands of pictures. I went to exhibitions at museums and galleries and looked at the efforts of other photographers. I became familiar with some of the ones who became very well known and tried to put myself in their shoes to discover how they created the “looks” they got in their images. It was a process that was almost all-consuming. I have used the Tiger Woods analogy for golfers quite a bit. Someone asked him “How did you get so good?” His response was, “Hit 1,000 golf balls each day.” It sounds kind of ludicrous, but that’s the kind of determination it takes. (By the way, it would take a normal person about eight hours to hit that many golf balls). When you’ve got that kind of desire, the right instruction will make the process go that much faster.