A recent shoot reminded me of an important lesson that sometimes a shoot concept just doesn’t work. I would expect this occasionally with an inexperienced model or when I’m working with a new model. In this case I was working with an experienced model that I’ve shot with many times before and always with great results. One of the concepts that I brought to shoot just didn’t work. The model couldn’t feel it and get into the right mindset. We tried for a while and she did get close a few times, but in the end she just never felt it and the shots just aren’t there.
My mistake came when I kept working on the idea even after it became obvious to me that she couldn’t get her mind into the right place. It’s true that she wanted to keep trying, but at some point I should have moved to another concept that held more promise. The reminder comes to adapt your shoot to the situation that you’re in and not being afraid to abandon a concept that isn’t working. You can always try it again another day or with another model. Here we didn’t have time for one concept and if I’d moved to that and left the other concept behind I think we’d had a more successful shoot.