I thought I would let you in on a couple of backstage secrets of how I shot this recent Harper’s Bazaar story with the beautiful Heidi Middleton and her fabulous babes.
I didn’t have the luxury of scouting this beautiful property prior before packing my bags so I jumped online to see if I could find any images to see the setting of the place. For me this is vital as it will assist me in knowing which lens to pack.
From the images I found on the net I thought the property was in a big field but when I arrived I was surprised (and delighted to see) it was actually in a village. This made capturing a big home like this from the front challenging because I was very close to the building.
Some of you may recall from my ‘How to shoot a chateau’ post that the bigger the building the trickier it is to keep lines straight if you can’t get far enough away from it.
Heidi was a dream! I think I have probably mentioned before how much I love Heidi. What a dream she was to shoot, her calmness, kindness, creativity and beauty. She was great and knew her property backwards and loved some particular parts like the beautiful ivy wall and we all dreamed of her being photographed on it on a ladder.
Red Dress Series
To shoot this photo I was on a super long ladder leaning up against the neighbors’ house in front! So the building wasn’t totally distorted I needed to be as high as I could or at least as close as possible to the middle of the building height. Shooting from a ladder is not my favourite place (yikes, did I tell you about my fear of heights) and Heidi was sitting on the balcony of the building.
I used a 70-200m L-series Canon lens and my arms were literally in a spasm by the time we had completed the shot. I had to balance myself the best I could so as not to have camera shake from the heavy lens.
We started out with Heidi sitting on the balcony and doing some more detailed shots and this lens meant that I could capture as much of the building in the image as possible including the turret, come closer in for a portrait and a vertical shot of her being playful.
I couldn’t have done these pictures without a team. We had a super photographer with me and another assistant with Heidi and we took breaks as much as possible.
When I look at the shots now I think we must have gone mad! But they were shot in a very short time. I wouldn’t recommend that any of you do this. DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DO!
Flowery Skirt and Top Series
To shoot this photo we required two ladders! So the building wasn’t totally distorted I needed to be as high as I could or at least as close as possible to the middle of the building height. That meant both of us were on super long ladders. My assistant held my ladder as I had an extremely heavy lens and feared tipping.
To have the variety of images you see of the ivy wall it took a while for me to get my ladder in the right position and then we were fighting against the light that was about to come over the turret (who wouldn’t want a building with a turret?) and straight into my lens.
I used a 70-200m L-series Canon lens and my arms like in the pic above. I had to balance myself the best I could so as not to have camera shake from the heavy lens.
This lens gave me the flexibility to come in for a close-up and still get as much of the building as I could without getting off my ladder. We lost a lot of time moving the ladder even an increment.
To get that skirt moving and add a little magic took a lot of yelling across the front yard as we were both so far away from each other. Her moving the skirt added a new level to the photo.
The last shot of Heidi and her girls were shot in a field of flowers (and required no ladders, yay) we spotted on our way to her place in the morning. This pic was taken just after the sun slid over the hill and I exposed for her skin which gave the little backlight in her hair but left the rest of the foreground in even light.
I hope you enjoyed these little insights into this shoot, it really was one of those special photography days you hold tight to your heart.
One of the questions I am asked often is ‘how do I find my style as a photographer’?
So let’s look first at what is a style or vision?
Photography is a personal vision. It is an individual way of looking at the world and capturing a photo that tells a story.
No two photographers see the same subject in the same way. Your particular taste and vision will set you apart from other photographers and this is your precious gift. A photographer’s vision can be seen repeated in their photos over and over again, like a brand.
The great Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt’s trademark black and white images of dogs, street photography and portraits are infused with humour, wit and romance. Steve McCurry another Magnum star almost works exclusively in vibrant colour with a more serious tone and if you look closely at his portraits they are always simple and engaging.
Robert Doisneau exclusively used black and white and his images of Paris are romantic, sweet and always with a dash of innocence. You can almost feel the kindness of this man in his images.
The great Elliott Erwitt also has this to say about his style and his choice of subject matter. Erwitt mentions in interviews that ‘his colleagues in Magnum are generally seen as more “serious” photographers– who photograph more “serious” events.’
However Erwitt tries to not take himself too seriously: “Well, I’m not a serious photographer like most of my colleagues. That is to say,I’m serious about not being serious.”
One thing that all these photographers have in common is that you can easily recognize their work without seeing their ‘byline’ (byline is a photographer’s or a journalist’s name printed alongside their story in a magazine). Their work is their byline.
They all have their own vision, their own style of lighting, emotions they wish to portray, their own presentation of their photos, mood of their work, personality and their own special way that they communicate through their images
When I arrived in Florence in the year 2000, I didn’t have access to a huge group of friends or contacts but I did have Popi (my gorgeous landlady) and her friends. I started there, I asked to photograph them, the kids I shared the house with and the people on the streets of Florence and slowly the people I would interact with each day.
I started messing around, taking photos that I thought I wanted to take from portraits to fashion inspired photos. I followed my heart and this is where it led me. I now realise the values I held dear and subjects that were in my subconscious at the time came through.
LOVE AND EMOTIONS
Love and lack of it in the previous years had been a big theme for me and when I arrived in Italy it seemed like I was surrounded by it. Photography has always been about the emotions for me. Capturing all those outwardly expressed emotions in Italy came naturally. I couldn’t believe the amount of public displays of affection and I think it was also a reflection of the highly emotional state I felt after leaving my life in Sydney to find something I loved – photography.
A lot of what we shoot as photographers is about how WE FEEL.
MOVEMENT
I had been trapped in an office for the best part of my adult life and movement felt like the opposite to me, it represented life, action and adventure. I was obsessed with movement of all kinds including families on vespas, people of all ages riding bikes in Florence or driving strange little vehicles in the Italian countryside. Movement has become part of my style as I am always attracted to it no matter whether it is vespas, cars or people. I love blur and the emotions that come with movement in a photo.
My obsession with religious iconography had to do with my lack of religious grounding in Australia and arriving to the overload and beauty of religious iconography in Italy. I was a magnet to a Madonna! I was obsessed with every tabernacle on a street corner, statues of Madonna’s in churches and religious art and just kept shooting them. I never asked why or what I would do with them but I think it comes back to my instinct.
I was attracted to the emotion they portrayed and just went with it.
ELEGANCE
I have always loved fashion and had long been a lover of fashion magazines and beautiful clothes. This love flowed over into photography even though I was shooting travel and life photos in the beginning it was often reflected.
I loved the innate elegance of Italians and would stop well-dressed people in the street and ask if I could take a photo. If I had the choice I would seek out someone dressed at the market in a certain way or with the right apron and boots. Clothes have always been a big deal for me and they are still are a big part of how I love to shoot. They really help make an image stronger.
Confession: I have ‘tweaked’ or created photos from the beginning, dressing friends and even Francesco on holidays to go out and take a photo that I wanted or felt would express something.
I love things that make me laugh in life and even more when I can capture it in a photo. I think this comes back to who we are as photographers, often what we shoot is how WE FEEL OR THINK. IT IS OFTEN ABOUT US.
BLACK AND WHITE
I shot and printed almost exclusively in black and white in the early years and as I didn’t have an end use at the time for my images, I did what pleased me. Black and white became a huge part of my style and in the early years I loved shooting at night and would always end up with half a roll of film in my camera the day afterwards and go out and shoot in daylight – hence I always had a lot of grain in my images – all by accident.
SUBJECTS
There is a certain romance, nostalgia and love of all things old and falling apart in my style (except for people). You will probably notice in most of my travel images there is rarely a modern building or a clean hard edged interior, you are more likely to find a building or street with an ancient story or full of life, walls with peeling paint and faded colours. This was and is a reflection of my love for Europe and its stories and layers.. just like life.
Don’t be in hurry to develop your ‘style’. It will come naturally if you take the photos that you love and from the heart. Try not to be too influenced by everyone around you.
Ask yourself what are your values, what is important to you?
Keep shooting the photos you want to take and listen to your inner voice. Don’t ask why
Ask yourself what is it you want to say in your images?
With time your style will come without you even realising it. You may find using a particular camera, a particular lighting setup, a post production process, a lens, injecting energy and emotions or using a certain depth of field may create an effect you like and your natural style will develop.
The post production choices that you make to present your photos is also a big contributor to your style, whether you choose to use high contrast black and white, punchy colour, faded vintage colours or low contrast sepia images all becomes part of your photographic look.
Music portrait photographer Anton Corbijn found his style by accident. He decided against using a flash or a tripod when shooting his portraits — he claims that he’s never been good with the technical stuff — and because of that he developed an instantly recognizable style using high speed grainy film early on.
“Your handicap is your strongest asset,” he explains. “I made it work for myself, and then somehow that becomes how you take pictures, which is different to a lot of people. I mean, you always strive for the perfect thing, but then life gets in the way. A lot of my better pictures have slight imperfections… I look back at the old pictures, and I made so many mistakes.”
I hope this helps you on your path to finding your style and personal vision.
“But I tell you, for me, each photographer brings his own light from when he was a kid, in this fraction of a second when you freeze reality, you also freeze all this background. You materialize who you are.” Sebastiao Salgado
I am often asked by photographers what photographic techniques or camera I use that helps me take the kind of photos I do.
I am sure I have a perplexed look on my face for a couple of seconds before I respond.
There is no doubt a good camera is a great tool that every photographer needs and of course we need to know the basics of photography to master a situation but I usually respond with these two words – curiosity and passion.
You probably are looking perplexed at home in from your computer screen or phone reading this, thinking is that what makes her pictures happen?
Well, they are the two things that drive me since I picked up a camera. They are the things that push me to learn new techniques or try something new.
Curiosity sometimes gets me into hot water but most times it finds me great pictures. Curiosity provokes me to keep going when I feel I haven’t found anything interesting and it’s my personal mentor sitting on my shoulder whispering ‘go on Carla, crawl under that fence, you can do it, there is something magic on the other side‘. Curiosity taunts me, teases me and eggs me on and have curiosity to thank each day when I go home a happy photographer.
Her side kick, Passion is my second secret weapon. Passion for life, people and for what I do saunters hand in hand with Curiosity. They are a dynamic duo these two and when they are switched on, I am just putty in their hands.
Passion is an emotional creature, she makes me feel the music deep within, she lets me slip into the rhythm of the dance, the procession or the snip of the scissors at the barbers. Passion makes me get out of bed in the morning when the light still hasn’t made her appearance and skip off into the morning waiting for the magic.
Passion connects me to my subjects and makes me care, really care about the person in front of me.
The best photos I have ever taken were with these two ‘tools’ in my photography kit.
Don’t fret over what kind of camera you have or whether you know enough, if you have curiosity and passion in your toolkit you are destined for great photos.
They will sweep you along, push you to learn, keep going when you want to give up and be inspired to take the photos you dream of.
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” Walt Disney
All photos Chateau Gudanes Copyright Carla Coulson
A while back I was asked by Harper’s Bazaar to shoot the beautiful Chateau Gudanes and the Waters family, the wonderful family that fell in love with this place and have taken on the massive job of renovating it.
While it’s awfully exciting to be asked to shoot a Chateau (I blogged about it here) it’s also daunting. The sheer size of this place makes it a photographic challenge in the taking and in the planning. You see we are talking about a place that has 70 rooms and is perched on an exquisite piece of land surrounded by mountains.
I thought it would be fun today to give you some inside tips on how I shot it.
1. Scout It
I shot the exterior and interior in one day but I was never going to be able to shoot everything. I had the luxury of seeing Chateau Gudanes months earlier which made me realise I would need to rent special long lenses to be able to shoot it from up on the mountain. I made a list of my favourite things and started with number 1!
2. Hero Shot
OK, so on a place like this there are probably only going to be a couple of hero shots (the one the magazine will use to open the story). I felt it would be a shot of the Chateau or the gates because both of them a breathtaking. So I shot the Chateau from as many angles as possible. I was up at sunrise and it was a day that changed every five minutes so I was lucky to catch fog, sunshine and rain in a space of an hour.
So I am like a dog with a hamshank! I am not walking away from a shoot without the shot so I will shoot from as many angles as I can to make sure I have what the magazine needs. These are just half a dozen of maybe 16 options I handed in of the Chateau and the gates giving horizontal and vertical options.
The gates were such an amazing subject to shoot..
3. Get Up High Or Shoot It In It’s Context
So we all want to know where is this Chateau and what’s around it! The only way to do this is to go for a drive and see what you can find. Fortunately I had the lovely Karina Waters as a guide who knows this little baby’s best angles and she kindly showed me her favourite spots.
4. Shooting Interiors
I am super excited by interiors like this, I love the patina, the architecture and the light. There is only one difficulty the proportions are huge so you really need to be careful from where you shoot or you end up with very distorted lines. I shot all the interiors on a tripod on approx 400 ISO..
In the case of the staircase I centred myself between the staircase and the door on the right and put my tripod up as high as it would go and then stood on a little stool.
As you can see I loved the staircase and didn’t want to miss a shot of this beautiful balustrade. I rarely use a wide angle lens but this is one case where it was the only way to get the whole perspective. When using a wide angle lens on architecture I often find it is better when you are on top of the subject as opposed to being far away. When you are far away it looks distorted.
To shoot this pic I paid careful attention the lines and distortion. I had my tripod as high as it would go and used a ladder to shoot from so that I was as close as possible to the middle of the distance from floor to ceiling. The closer I am to the floor with a height like this the more the vertical lines will be distorted..
I adored how Karina had little still lifes happening in many of the rooms, I wandered around the rooms looking at them from all angles taking hand held snaps till I liked something I saw and then I would set up my tripod.
As I was conscious of shooting a whole series of portraits the following day, I wanted to be careful that I had many different angles and wasn’t presenting the same room over and over again shot from the same perspective for the interior shots and the portraits.
I love playing with lines and shapes when shooting interiors and this one was fun but a challenge. I had recently bought a super tripod with a central column that lies horizontally (I could have got a pair of Louboutins for the same price) but this is where it out performs any other tripod. I set the camera up with the lens pointing straight up through the stairwell and I crawled under my camera to check focus, composition and exposure.
This too was shot from a ladder and I centred myself in the middle of the shot.
5. Details
I shot as many details as I could of the architecture. Detail shots give you a sense of intimacy and are great combination for an art director to work with with general interiors (of course we managed to squeeze a cat into our pic – thanks Karina).
6. Exterior Landscapes and Grounds
We are almost done! I shot scenes from the Chateau windows down onto the village below, shot from the front of the house looking back towards the mountains, in the park and played with the light.
Unfortunately, I can’t show you all the shots as my blog will blow up but I hope this helps and gives you an idea of what a wonderful place Chateau Gudanes is and if you ever stumble across a Chateau to shoot these tips might help.
Check out the fabulous Chateau Gudanes here cause it’s marvellous… A huge thank-you to the Walters family and the lovely Karina for making this shoot a dream. You can find them on Instagram and Facebook.
“For me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I’m not sure where I’m going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn’t do it.” Architect Frank Gehry
If you want to know how you can live more wholeheartedly, reconnect to your joy, creativity and purpose, click on the image above to join the free training.
Photography is a personal vision. It is an individual way of looking at the world and capturing a photo that tells a story. Your particular taste and vision will set you apart from other photographers and this is your precious gift. So have faith in your style!
A photographer’s vision can be seen repeated in their photos over and over again, like a brand. Fashion photographer Ellen Von Unwerth produces splendid images of sexy girls having lots of fun in wild colours and high contrast black and whites.
Photo Copyright Ellen Von Unwerth
Paolo Roversi creates soft focused dreams with his large format Polaroid camera and Richard Avedon was renowned for his simplicity, elegance and his famous white background. Ansel Adams searched for silence, perfection and majesty in his landscapes and Helmut Newton’s black and whites have come to symbolise strong sexy women.
Paolo Roversi’s said this about his style “When I look at my pictures from 20 years ago, even when the technique of the light is very different, I see a kind of unity, and this surprises me. Even in my book, Nudi, the photos look like they were taken in the same place, in the same light, on the same day. But they were taken over the course of 10 to 12 years, in New York, London, Paris???
Photo Copyright Paolo Roversi
One thing that all these photographers have in common is that you can easily recognise their work without seeing their ‘byline’ (byline is a photographers or a journalists name printed alongside of their story in a magazine). Their work is their byline.
They all have their own vision, their own style of lighting, emotions they wish to portray, their own presentation of their photos, mood of their work, personality and their own special way that they communicate with their sitter and this shows in the photos.
So don’t ask yourself why you take the photos you do just take the photos you love! And try not to be influenced by everyone around. Believe in yourself.
“Be yourself, the world worships the original.” Jean Cocteau
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Natalia Vodianova by Paolo Roversi
