PSD MODEL SCHOOL #3 The eyes have it!
Look at the photo above. What grabs your attention about it? That’s three of Brightside Model Agency’s girls, in a photo I love! Shot with a very simple lighting setup in Sublime Hair Design. Hair by Lesley Moses and clothes by Totty Rocks - two of my favourite girls after they hand-made me a gorgeous shirt (I’ll post a photo of yours truly sporting it when I get a chance!)
Now look at the photo in the post below, what draws your attention first?
OK, so Emily Jones - Superior Model Management - is wielding a knife, that would grab my attention pretty quickly. But really the first thing we all look at is her eyes! Same with the photo above. And in each case here they are all full of life, all telling a story.
When I have a shot that is perfect in every way, except d’oh!, the model has their eyes shut, then I need to transplant eyes from a similar shot, where she had them open. What I quickly realised was that the tiniest imperfection in my technique would be obvious a mile away, even when the photo is small on my mac screen. That taught me how sensitive we all are to each others eyes. And we’ve all been told to maintain eye contact with people when wanting to appear interested in what they are saying, right?
And who doesn’t know about Tyra Banks’ famous ‘sm-eyezing’ - smiling with your eyes.
I’m sure there are many more reasons that we love looking at eyes, but when I am working with models I always try to give them an emotion or character to play as that helps to think about how they should be feeling. But with or without that guidance, nothing kills a shot quicker than dead eyes, so really it is up to you models to come prepared to let a story burst through your eyes. Whenever you are practising posing, you need to make sure you get some powerful eye looks polished up as well.
Some of the most common things you will be asked to portray will be: anger, intensity, power/superiority, kindness, warmth, love, happiness, flirty, sexy.
It all fits in with the acting theme from my #1 class below. But next time you are on set, be prepared to work those eyes along with the rest of your body and give me a headache because there are too many good shots!
