How to Effectively Scout Locations For Your Upcoming Photoshoots
Developing an idea for a memorable photoshoot is not an easy task. It involves concentration, creativity, discipline, managing skills, and much more depending on the type of photoshoot. Often, we start with a barely visible image in our head. But having a strong sense what we want, will help us develop it into a final, achievable visual. An inspiration is a crucial part of this algorithm. Everything can serve as an inspiration: from a dress to a hair color you saw on someone; from music to a movie you watched last night; from a color at the shop counter to a tree in your backyard. When you have something realistic to build your theme upon, things get easy. But what do you do when you have no idea where to shoot it? Your mobile phone can be your savior here.
In the place I live (Armenia) and work I don’t have the luxury of hiring big teams to help set up a shoot. This means doing mostly everything on my own, from the styling, to the idea development, to the art-direction, to organizing the whole shoot. But the one thing we cannot overlook is the location. There can be no shoot without the perfect location, but there is not always time to scout for locations. As a result, I have developed a scenario some of you might already be using. Instead of carrying a huge camera bag all the time, I rely on my mobile phone which is in my pocket at all times. This way I can always take a snapshot of anything my eyes find potentially interesting and exploitable as a location for a shoot.
This might sound simplistic or just too easy, but it really works. Have you ever stopped to gaze at a structured wall, an incredible shade of sky, or a geometric building somewhere in the middle of a walk? I bet you did. And that’s when you need to take a snapshot of it with your phone. In time, you will have a huge library of snapshots of locations and when you need one urgently, you just go and pick.
Nuances to Pay Attention to
- Taking just one picture is usually not enough. You can carry a notepad to make notes on location surroundings, but what I usually do is take several pictures to have an idea of my workable angles. Sometimes, a 360-degree video is useful, but scrolling through snapshots is much easier.
- A very important step is to spot the sun and note the time at which you took the picture (which is automatically embedded into your mobile snapshot details FYI), and know what direction the sun is going to move. This step will save you a lot of time when you work on your lighting scheme. There is no worse scenario than arriving at your perfect location under totally wrong lighting conditions and with inadequate lighting equipment.
- Consider the objects or people that might clutter your images when shooting at a chosen location. For example, cars are your enemies, unless you need some in your final photos. Pay attention to the time. You might spot an excellent location while you jog one early morning, but that same location might be an overcrowded place at noon. You might see a nice alley which is full of students around afternoon, but all free when it’s class time. Those windows in time can allow you to better schedule your shoot and save you a useless trip.
It is obvious creative people see usual things under a different light. So never be afraid to try and transform any usual place into a remarkable location for your upcoming shoot. You might see doubtful faces asking why you shoot at this or that average place. They might even whisper discouraging words, but that should never stop you. One of our duties as photographers is to show the world under different light.
If you also work with this method, then show before and after results of your vision in the comments.
This article was originally written for Fstoppers.com