When The Camera Becomes A Prop
It is a bit of a cliche for photographers to hand their camera to a model and photograph them making an image back at you. Pretty much every fashion photographer, portrait photographer, and figure study photographer has done it. I am by no means an exception here. I’ve done it plenty. In fact, I’ve done it a lot!! But hey, I’ve never claimed to be a particularly original photographer.
To be fair to myself, the only times I’ve gone down this road are when a model expresses an interest in a camera I’ve brought along to a session. Sometimes it’s because the model is a photographer themself. Sometimes they just like the way the camera looks. Sometimes we just need to break the ice a little bit and use a prop for a few minutes before thinking up a new pose. All are perfectly valid reasons.
Despite all the cliches around the trope of an attractive woman holding a camera, I can’t deny the geek in me loves the ultimate result of these images. I’m a camera nerd. I can’t help it. A huge portion of my life is spent with a camera in hand pointed at things. People, trees, street signs, mountains, you name it. When I get to share in a little camera geekery during a photo session I am of course going to welcome it.
Occasionally when I hand a model a camera to be photographed with there is film already loaded and they snap a quick picture. The results are always quite humorous and sometimes I’m tempted to share them. But then I think to myself, naw, maybe I’ll save those images just for me.
Camera: (first image) Mamiya C330 TLR. (second image) Mamiya 645e. (third image) Mamiya C330 TLR
Film: (first image) Ilford FP4 in 120. (second image) Ilford Delta 3200 in 120. (third image) Ilford HP5 in 120.
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