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?

In a couple places I refer to something called “Copyleft“.  While the term–and the concepts behind it–goes back almost 40 years, it’s only been in the past few that it’s really gained a popular, mainstream, following.

As technology has made it easier for people to  share, modify, and make copies of “intellectual property”, special interest groups have pushed for stricter and stricter interpretations of copyright law.    The US Constitution  says “The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Until the latter part of the 20th century, copyrights were short (28 years, with a 28 year renewal option).  Then, in 1976, Congress extended copyrights to 75 years or 50 years after the creator’s death.  In 1998, Congress extended them to 120 years, or 70 years after the creator’s death.   Under the current, strict  interpretations of copyright, this means it’s possible you couldn’t make a copy of your wedding photos (shot today by a 20-year-old photographer) until somewhere around the year 2180.  Your grand-children couldn’t scan a copy of your 170-year-old photo and post it on their geneology website.  They couldn’t share it with their family, donate it to a museum, or do anything other than hand it on the wall in their house.

Strict adherents to copyright insist that you, as a consumer, aren’t allowed to do anything with a copyrighted work except use it the way they say you can.

Copyleft rejects that idea–to varying degrees.

Over the past decade or so, copyleft licenses have met with a large number of legal challenges–which they have one.  This has established a legal precedent which means that people like me can feel secure using these licenses for our businesses.

People like me believe that you shouldn’t need to ask for special permission to use the things you’ve bought in the ways you want you.  However, we still want to be able to say that there are things you’re not allowed to do with our work.

In my eyes, I’m a photographer.  I get paid to take photos.  I’m not a print shop.  I don’t want to spend the time and effort to make 300 wallet-sized copies of the same photo.   And I certainly don’t want to waste time tracking people down to see if they went to the local pharmacy chain and made a couple copies to send off to Aunt Martha and Grandma Betty.

On the other hand, if you’re using these photos to make money… I expect proper compensation.

That’s fair, right?

So, when you shoot with me, you’re given explicit rights to make copies of your photos, to share them with friends, to upload them to your personal websites, to use them in your yearbook or church directory–all the normal things that people do with photos of themselves.  You can take them to whomever you wish to get copies made–from a professional lab to a photo kiosk in the mall.     And if, in 50 years, your children want to make copies, they don’t have to try and hunt me down to ask for permission: They’ll already have it.

For me, copyleft means I can spend my time being creative rather than worrying about Aunt Martha getting an “unorthorized copy” of your family photo.

As I build this site, I have to acknowledge the models who have helped me to build the portfolio that has allowed me to show off so many wonderful images.  From time to time, I’ll be writing about some of the models with whom I have worked and by whom I have been impressed.

Whether I’m shooting for a paying client or for fun, the model is a vital part of the project.    Where some photographers treat models as part of the scenery, I prefer to actively collaborate with the model.  While this may mean that I need to shoot a lot more images in order to get the one that’s just right, it also allows for the opportunity to capture amazing images that I never would have thought up on my own.

I like to take what opportunities I can to point out those models (and other collaborators) who deserve the praise and recognition for the work they do–both in front of the camera and elsewhere.

Model = AidenRN

When looking for a photographer, a model–pro, amateur, or regular person–wants to know “Why should I work with this man?”  To a great degree, the work must speak for itself; you have to like what you see.   Positive recommendations are, of course, a great resource.  The thing that’s often overlooked is the basic philosophy of the photographer.

Beauty is not only skin deep, and the camera always lies.

A good model understands this, and a good photographer uses it to his advantage. I continually strive to find the deeper beauty and the perfect lie. Pretty people are boring; art should tell a story, reveal a secret–silly, sad, or sensual, it doesn’t matter. This gallery affords me the opportunity to tell those stories. I hope the viewers can understand them.

Photography is not my profession, but my passion. I’m not looking to deal with people who wish to be the latest supermodel. I’m looking to find beauty and tell lies–in other words, make art.

There’s a misconception that photographs don’t lie.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  While a photograph may be very accurate at depicting what the camera “sees”, the camera is narrow-sighted and half-blind.  It sees what we tell it to see.

Not only do I understand that, I actively embrace it.

Photography–even in it’s most factual applications–is an art.  A photographer needs to learn how a camera “sees” things, and then make it see what he wants it to.   The photos I take are very different from what you’ll see from most photographers.   I use very harsh–often unforgiving–lighting because it brings out details that “proper” lighting washes away.  I don’t do any retouching or “Photoshopping”, because I find those to be the wrong kind of lies–the kind that hide who you are rather than showing who you are.

There’s a second side to the lens, however.  The camera can only see what’s in front of it.  Where other photographers will carefully pose a model or client in order to get things “just right”, I don’t.  That’s not you.  That’s me posing you in the “expected style”.   In my studio, we’ll talk, we’ll joke around, we’ll get to know each other a little bit, and we’ll make sure that the photos we take show you being you.

Photographer

I first started working with photography early in high school. Even at that time, I was interested in looking at things differently; standard portraits and landscapes just didn’t do it for me.

I hold a Bachelor of the Arts in Technical Theatre (design) from the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay. 2 decades of working with lighting and design for stage and dance has given me a strong understanding of the rules of lighting and presenting objects and people–and the courage to step beyond those rules to create stark, powerful photos.

Philosophy

My job, as a photographer, is not to shape you into the pose I want; it’s to let you be you and capture the moments that show it off.

The moto of my company is “Truth, Lies, & Beauty”. Beauty is not only skin deep, and the camera always lies. The skill is in finding the lie that reveals the greater truth about a person’s beauty.

The photos I take are not airbrushed or “photoshopped”. If you’re looking for a glamorous photo with perfect skin and every hair in place, look elsewhere. If you’re looking for photography which understands that imperfections are what make a person interesting, this is the place.

Ownership

With most artists these days–including photographers–you’ll hear a lot of blustering about copyrights; namely all the things you’re not allowed to do with the photos you buy. A few of us operate under a different philosophy that’s come to be known as “copyleft“. There’s a lot of variation on the particulars, but the core idea is “Yeah… I still own the images I take, but I’m not going to get all bent out of shape if you choose to use them for personal stuff.”

As the photographer, I do own the rights to the images. But I’m not going to come chasing you down to check if you’ve made copies at the local photo-shack, or if you’ve posted them in your online profile. I’ve got better things to do with my time.

Where I will assert my rights is if you intend to use the images for commercial applications (advertising, for example), or for promoting things against which I have strong moral objections (racist propoganda, for example).

If you want to use the images for commercial purposes, we just need to add a rider to the contract stating that you’ve paid for this use (see the Rate Card for details). Not a big deal.

Operation

I work out of my small home studio, or on location. I’m casual, easy-going, randomly irreverent, and prone to get into strange contortions to get just the right angle for a shot.

During a shoot, my shutter is constantly moving. It’s common to average about 200 shots an hour. A lot of those will be junk. The vast majority will be okay, but not good enough. The few that remain, however, are where the camera’s lies reveal the truth.

I ask that models come to the shoot with a selection of their own wardrobe (excluding, of course, fashion and commercial shoots based on wardrobe). We will select the outfits that work best. A few tips on wardrobe:

• Solid colors work best. Large patterns can work okay as long as they aren’t too complex. Small patterns–especially stripes and checks–can cause strange effects when photographed. These effects are usually enhanced when images are resized. So… while the pinstripes may look great in real life, they can become a spastic disco pattern when posted online.
• Black fabrics will not show up as black. Black dyes are based on either a red base or blue base. Under studio lighting, that base color will show through. Our brains know how to adjust for the color changes of lighting; the camera does not. A black blouse & skirt combo that appears to match perfectly may show up as purple and green in a photo.
• Unless there’s a reason for tighter-fitting clothes, loose clothing tends to work better. Especially under harsh studio lighting, tight clothing tends to exagerate bra lines and panty lines and other unwanted features. Loose clothing also makes it easier for you move around and be yourself during the shoot.

I ask that models come to the shoot without makeup, but (if applicable) bring along a basic makeup kit.

Always remember that the shoot is about you. Don’t be afraid to do your own thing, ask questions, or make suggestions. Just don’t be offended if I choose not to take the suggestions.