Shana Martin: Powerful & Beautiful

During college, I was introduced to dance.  I’d seen ballet before, but always thought of it as “people in tights prancing around looking silly”.  While working as a stagehand for a wide range of dance companies–from traditional ballet to modern to avant garde–I learned exactly how powerful and amazing dance really is.  It was almost a revelation to understand that these 90-lb girls were far more powerful and athletic than most anyone in professional sports.  I distinctly remember seeing a dancer with the Hubbard Street Dance Company–a woman in her 30′s (which is downright elderly in the world of dance)–and thinking “this is a woman who could kick holes in plate steel”.  A bit of hyperbole, perhaps, but probably not by much.

My exposure to (and expanding appreciation of) dance shaped my concept of “fitness”.  And my training in (and execution of) “dance lighting” created an aesthetic that would come back to me decades later when I picked up my camera to shoot models.

The lighting in theatre is highly stylized.  Dance takes it even farther.  The lighting in dance is designed to highlight the shape of the body–often at the expense of seeing the face.  And the scenery isn’t even given a 2nd thought[1].

When I first started working with “model-based” photography (rather than shooting theatrical sets and performances), I set up “proper” lighting.  The models were well lit, but it was rather boring.   I’m not sure what triggered the thought, but one day I threw “correct” lighting out the window and shot a model using “dance” lighting.  The results were fantastic.

Model = Marksman

Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to work with several fitness models–or models who are very athletic.  My style of lighting is both extremely flattering and extremely unforgiving.  For an athletic model, the harsh lighting highlights and accentuates muscle tone and the shape of the body.   Traditional lighting–designed to show a person’s face–de-emphasizes musculature.  You can see the whole body very well, but it gets “smoothed out”.

My approach to fitness photography takes a completely different vector.  What’s important is the body–the muscles, the shape, the tone.   I’m not interested in the traditional trappings of a “sexy photo”; that’s not what it’s about.  I strive to portray athletes as powerful.  Power, strength, and the perfection of form are inherently beautiful and sexy.

My approach to fitness photography is very different from the norm. Where traditional photographers seek to portray fitness models as “sexy”, I choose to present them as “powerful”.  A woman who can bench press twice her weight, run a marathon, or go 15 rounds in the ring shouldn’t need to put on a bikini and a cheesy smile to be seen as beautiful.  A powerful form–male or female–is beautiful.

40 is Beautiful

France made the news a few months ago for a proposed law that has been photoshopped, airbrushed or edited in some manner.  Without going into a long-winded explanation, this proposed law is utterly hilarious to any photographer (and utterly terrifying at the same time).  Every image beyond a snapshot is “edited in some manner”.  That’s what photographers do.  That’s why we get paid the big bucks (so to speak).

Proper lighting, camera angle, cropping the photo, dodge & burn, tweaking saturation, adding filters; all of these things are “editing the image” so as to present something different from what the human eye would see.

That being said:  I, personally, feel that editing tools such as Photoshop are drastically overused–and even abused.  Ignoring the excessive examples, the philosophy of “just photoshop it” is entirely too pervasive in modern photography.  We’ve come to expect skin without wrinkles or pores, every hair in perfect place, snow-white teeth, and wrinkle-free clothing.   We expect plastic people.

I don’t do that.

Yes, I tweak images to highlight certain features, but I don’t “paint” a new image over the top of what’s there.  People have wrinkles and texture to their skin.  Hair isn’t plastic.  Teeth don’t shine out like headlights on luxury car.

Images from me will not be airbrushed, they will not be photoshopped.   They will not paint an image of someone you aren’t.  What they will do is strive to bring out the best of who you actually are.

After all… when someone sees your photo and says “Wow!  She’s gorgeous!” don’t you want them to be looking at you, and not at some digitally-adjusted plastic painting of someone who only kind of looks like you?

Model = Lee Kitten

Art isn’t only for the elite, and photographs are more than portraits.

Art is created from emotion, creativity, and vision. Step into the studio and create something that will make people stop and look–something that will make them think and feel.

Throughout the centuries, even the finest artists have used amateurs as inspiration for their greatest works. You needn’t be a professional model to create artistic works. Quite the contrary: the most artistic and powerful images I have created have been working with women who are modeling for fun. Some have been active amateurs, others have simply been intrigued by a specific project on which I’ve been working.

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