Seamless vs Alley

Alan in the alley

What and where a photographer places a portrait subject is often determined by a few different considerations. At times, you’ll simply be carrying out a client brief and have little or no say in the matter. Other times, you’ll only have 5 or 10 minutes to get the shots and have to do it in a boardroom or the corner of an office. Sometimes you’ll have the luxury of being able to create a concept and fully storyboard it and build up a set much like Dave Jackson did with his circus shoot. Other times it’ll be basic seamless backgrounds in a studio or found locations using the natural environment. Every photographer has their own bias and ideas as to what is best. A few days ago, I found myself in the newly opened D Studio in Taipei for an afternoon worth of casual shooting. I’d gone in with one particular idea that I wanted to try expecting that we’d be photographing some Brazilian and Hungarian dancers. I had a concept in mind for the Brazilian dancers that I’m not going to tell you about because I hope to execute it sometime in the future. Why couldn’t I do it the other day? Simply because none of the dancers bothered to show up. Or call and tell us they weren’t coming. Or answer the phone when we called them. It seems to be a growing problem amongst some of the foreign models and artistic community here in Taiwan that they think they can simply blow the shoot off. Fortunately we had a second session booked this time, following the previous week where a different model didn’t bother to show up or call (apparently a dog ate his phone). The second session featured a couple of Taiwanese guys who had a distinct idea as to what they wanted. Most of the shoot involved one of them only with the other deciding he wanted a quick session at the end. In comparison to the foreign talent, the locals are wonderful. Reliable, punctual and full of ideas.

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