What Is A Photographic “Set”?

What Is A Photographic “Set”?

by William Lulow

A few years ago I went through some old photographs trying to clean up my files, digitizing some that I wanted to keep and throwing away others. I have probably tossed hundreds of older negatives, prints, test shots and a whole lot of images that I haven’t looked at for years and probably never will again. During this process, I have come across any number of shots that have triggered many memories.

Here’s one where I used my one-and-a-half-year old daughter for back in the 1980s. One of my regular clients at the time was thinking of doing an advertisement about children’s fears of dark spaces like closets. So, I said I would set up a shot to see if they liked it. It would have been impractical for me to put the camera inside a closet because there wouldn’t have been enough room for me, the camera and a tripod. We had a doorway between our kitchen and my daughter’s room that allowed me some space to compose a shot that looked like it was taken from inside a closet. We set up a bar in the door jamb and hung some clothes so that it looked like a closet rod. I told my wife to have our daughter stand and pretend to look inside the “closet.” I placed a light outside, in her room with her crib and some of her toys. The light came from one side so her face was in shadow, but still had enough detail so that you could see her expression. She was probably too young to understand if I told her to look “scared,” but having her just stand there, peering into the space where I was sitting with my camera was enough. This was the shot:

With my wife holding on to her, our daughter had just the right look on her face and it looked remarkably like she was a little hesitant to see what was in the closet!

Finding this shot reminded me of how some of these sets work to create an overall impression. It’s like a stage play in a way, that the photographer sets up and the models or your subjects then act out whatever “part” is needed. It illustrates the point that creating an “ad” is very much like creating a small, compact drama that is used to sell an idea. I remember when I got used to calling my no-seam paper a “set,” even though no stage was actually built. It was still referred to as a set and whatever I needed to shoot would take place there. It is a concept that has stayed with me all these years. I even refer to it as a set if I’m on location outdoors. The theater has a proscenium arch and a curtain. Studios have sets in much the same way. If you are an advertising photographer, a fashion photographer or even a product photographer, you will always have sets to use when you are shooting your subjects. It is important to think of your photographs this way because it enables you think about the ability to crop out unwanted parts of any scene in your mind while you are shooting! You know kind of instinctively what the main subject will be and how you will compose it in your post-production efforts.

This is another example from my days as a catalog photographer. We normally had to shoot everything on a large view camera mostly an 8×10 Deardorff complete with bellows and focusing cloth.  The lenses for these cameras often did not have lens shades, so in order to prevent any flare from the lights, everything had to be arranged on a “set.” Here you can see that all the lights in the studio were hidden behind what we call “gobos,” or flats. They are shades that “go-between” the camera and the lights to prevent flare. The notion of a set, was instilled in you early on in your career when you had to shoot with these cameras.

Here’s what an 8×10 Deardorff looked like:

So, the notion of a “set” has been a helpful one over the years because it makes you think as a photographer,  how you are really constructing a kind of way in which people will see the photos you make. It forces you slow down a bit and really make a thoughtful composition before just clicking off so many shots. Here is an example of a “set” composed on location:

The set then, is basically anything you set up in front of your camera, but it is also in your mind. As the photographer, you know what you are looking for when you create an image. As I said, there may be things you see in the real world when you prepare to make a photograph that you know you will crop out or eliminate from the final print.

Here is an image that I literally “found” while skiing one day. The arrangement of the skis and poles almost cried out “still life” to me. I thought of it as a “set” and just shot it. Later, in post-production, I cropped out some extraneous things and enhanced it a bit.

All of the extra “equipment” like shades, background, lights and light stands just help you realize the images you wish to make. None of this needs to be seen by your viewers, but it’s there just the same. All of that extra “stuff” is what constitutes your SET!