Brandon: Have you ever worked with underage models?
Marcus: Who needs the trouble? I always said that if I managed to get rich enough to defend myself, I’d push that issue. Because I think that the legal environment regarding art photography of minors is “undue prior restraint” on freedom of expression. But at this point in my life I don’t need the headaches. I’ve had a few requests but I’d only shoot a minor if the parents were not only there, but in the photo as well. I have an idea for a shot involving a kid and parents but I haven’t found the right kid and parents yet. I want to do a shot of a pair of loving, proud, happy parents, sticking a burning stake into their kids’ eyes, so the child won’t see anything offensive.
Brandon: When you have one of your shoots with a hired model, do you have makeup/hair people? Or is that the models responsibility?
Marcus: The kind of stuff I do doesn’t require a lot of make-up and hair styling. So I am careful to explain to models in advance that I’d appreciate it if they’d do that part of it. But, honestly, I don’t need much – a bit of foundation and do something with the hair. I work with what I have.
Brandon: Do you find male models or female models easier to work with?
Marcus: I think that it’s about the same, except that I have more of an eye for how to represent females as beautiful and sexy because that’s what I’m into. When I shoot some gorgeous young guy, and he fits perfectly into my old clothes from when I was in college, I sometimes get a bit wistful. A lot of the time, models are nervous about getting molested by photographers (and, with good reason!) but strangely I’ve found that hasn’t got much to do with gender lines. Except that a muscular young guy who can kick your ass hasn’t got as much to worry about. Most of the female models I know have had at least one horrible experience with a photographer – so I make sure that they all see I lead a very public life; I make it easy to tell which other models I’ve worked with – and they can always ask whether I was OK or not. I find I don’t see male beauty as clearly; but I’m getting better with it, I think.
Brandon: Do you have any model horror stories, without naming names?
Marcus: I’ve had a few, but generally my experience has been fairly good. The only really annoying experience I had one was loser photographer who apparently has a bad habit of getting very possessive about “his” models and falling “in love” with them. Apparently one model blew him off to come shoot with me, and he took that as a machination on my part, and a mortal insult. So I smoothed that over (or so I thought) and it happened AGAIN about 6 months later! So he went around telling some tall tales about me and – well – models talk among eachother, too – they pretty quickly figured out what was really going on and that was the end of that. I guess my worst experience with a model was no fault of either of ours. I was shooting this young lady on a hot summer day and I didn’t know she had been up all night the night before, and had driven 3+ hours to get to me. So we were shooting in the woods on a hot day, and I was drinking tons of gatorade, and she wasn’t. We got back to the house and she lay down on the couch for a bit – and passed completely out. Apparently she’d gotten quite dehydrated. But I had no idea if it was something more serious, so I picked her up and carried her to my truck and took her to the emergency room. I come walking into the emergency room carrying this sexy little lady who is wearing a really thin dress with nothing underneath it, and the admitting nurse turns to one of the others and says, loudly, “make sure that you get a swab on her, and don’t let him leave until she comes to.”  Sitting in the waiting room with a state police trooper glaring at me was no damn fun, and fortunately the model came to just fine and told them everything was fine. I keep wondering that if she’d had a wicked sense of humor, I’d have probably been pretty badly beaten “resisting arrest” while they took me into custody.
Brandon: What advice do you have for beginning photographers?
Marcus: Wow – I could go on all night about that.
First off: think about how you learn best. Some people learn by studying and then trying, others by taking classes, and others by just experimenting. I’ve found that I learn best if I try something and fail a bit, then go do my research; that way when I’m reading, I have already got some practical hands on with what I’m reading about. Taking classes is a huge acellerator if you learn well by doing, but – again – I find that if I try (and fail a bit) before I take a class, when I take the class I’m mostly reinforcing and fixing what I’ve already learned. Anyhow, you need to think about how you learn and get out there and get going.
As one friend of mine once said: “hours in the darkroom can save you minutes in the library”
At the time, I didn’t realize how right he was. Now I realize that was a really profound observation.
And, of course, don’t worry too much about your gear. The same friend who said the “hours in the darkroom…” thing is an absolute photographic genius – and he loves experimenting. He got into an argument with some guy online and the guy was basically saying that you couldn’t really do good photography unless you had a “pro” camera and blah blah blah. You know the type. Well, my friend started posting these gorgeous scans of platinum contact prints – mostly flowers; they kind of looked like Imogen Cunningham’s still lifes of flowers. Beautiful stuff, simply wonderful. This went on for a while and my friend finally told the guy that he’d been shooting them with a Nokia camera-phone duct-taped to a light stand.
The point of that story is: if you know what you’re doing, you can accomplish amazing things with low-end gear. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can be using high-end gear and still fail. But there’s a “sweet spot” where the complexity of your gear matches your ability, and then you’ll upgrade your skills until you get to the point where your gear is irrelevant. There is this weird contradictory thing that if you’re seriously good you can make great shots just the same if you’re using duct tape and a cam-phone, but in order to GET to the level of experience where you can do that, you can’t get there with just a cam-phone.
Most of the serious awesome photographers I know have all the fancy gear because they got it on the way to getting where they are. And now that they’ve got it – they may as well use it.
Another point about gear is to think of your gear in terms of dollar per year. That’ll get you in the habit of asking yourself “how long will I use this, anyway?”
I bought my Hasselblad in 1991 and paid $6,000 for the whole thing. It’s now 2009, so I paid $340/year to have a camea that was perfect for my purposes. It still works fine. In the meantime I’ve gone through 4 digital SLRs. Because they keep getting better. So, I bought a great lighting kit, and a great film camera, and I buy my digital gear used, about a year after it first comes out, which saves me about 20% of the cost.
Why do I care so much about that?
Because – and this is a really important point – do NOT try to talk some model into doing trade for prints if you’re carrying a $4,000 camera. Just don’t do it.
Buy a $2,000 used camera of the preceeding years’ model, and pay your model. You’ll find that you’ll get much better pictures because your model is going to be working for you/with you. If you’re Irving Penn or someone like that, then “trade for prints” might mean something, but you really need to ask yourself if your prints are worth trading for. Most models would rather have next month’s rent in their pocket when they leave your studio, than your earnest experiments with lighting technique.
And, of course you should shoot a lot. But if you want to improve quickly, shoot with a sense of purpose. Give yourself an assignment, and complete it. Then review your work and assess it coldly and clinically. If you’re just shooting because you have a camera in your hand, you’ll wind up with thousands of “tourist photos” or “look! tits!” glamour shots. There’s nothing wrong with either of those, but ask yourself first if that’s what you want to be doing.
Last, but not least: do not tolerate censorship. Censorship, in any form, is establishing the basis that someone can arbitrarily say “I don’t like your art, so you can’t show it publicly.”
Fuck that. Fuck them.

Brandon: Have you ever worked with underage models?

Marcus: Who needs the trouble? I always said that if I managed to get rich enough to defend myself, I’d push that issue. Because I think that the legal environment regarding art photography of minors is “undue prior restraint” on freedom of expression. But at this point in my life I don’t need the headaches. I’ve had a few requests but I’d only shoot a minor if the parents were not only there, but in the photo as well. I have an idea for a shot involving a kid and parents but I haven’t found the right kid and parents yet. I want to do a shot of a pair of loving, proud, happy parents, sticking a burning stake into their kids’ eyes, so the child won’t see anything offensive.

Brandon: When you have one of your shoots with a hired model, do you have makeup/hair people? Or is that the models responsibility?

Marcus: The kind of stuff I do doesn’t require a lot of make-up and hair styling. So I am careful to explain to models in advance that I’d appreciate it if they’d do that part of it. But, honestly, I don’t need much – a bit of foundation and do something with the hair. I work with what I have.

Brandon: Do you find male models or female models easier to work with?

Marcus: I think that it’s about the same, except that I have more of an eye for how to represent females as beautiful and sexy because that’s what I’m into. When I shoot some gorgeous young guy, and he fits perfectly into my old clothes from when I was in college, I sometimes get a bit wistful. A lot of the time, models are nervous about getting molested by photographers (and, with good reason!) but strangely I’ve found that hasn’t got much to do with gender lines. Except that a muscular young guy who can kick your ass hasn’t got as much to worry about. Most of the female models I know have had at least one horrible experience with a photographer – so I make sure that they all see I lead a very public life; I make it easy to tell which other models I’ve worked with – and they can always ask whether I was OK or not. I find I don’t see male beauty as clearly; but I’m getting better with it, I think.

Brandon: Do you have any model horror stories, without naming names?

Marcus: I’ve had a few, but generally my experience has been fairly good. The only really annoying experience I had one was loser photographer who apparently has a bad habit of getting very possessive about “his” models and falling “in love” with them. Apparently one model blew him off to come shoot with me, and he took that as a machination on my part, and a mortal insult. So I smoothed that over (or so I thought) and it happened AGAIN about 6 months later! So he went around telling some tall tales about me and – well – models talk among eachother, too – they pretty quickly figured out what was really going on and that was the end of that. I guess my worst experience with a model was no fault of either of ours. I was shooting this young lady on a hot summer day and I didn’t know she had been up all night the night before, and had driven 3+ hours to get to me. So we were shooting in the woods on a hot day, and I was drinking tons of gatorade, and she wasn’t. We got back to the house and she lay down on the couch for a bit – and passed completely out. Apparently she’d gotten quite dehydrated. But I had no idea if it was something more serious, so I picked her up and carried her to my truck and took her to the emergency room. I come walking into the emergency room carrying this sexy little lady who is wearing a really thin dress with nothing underneath it, and the admitting nurse turns to one of the others and says, loudly, “make sure that you get a swab on her, and don’t let him leave until she comes to.”  Sitting in the waiting room with a state police trooper glaring at me was no damn fun, and fortunately the model came to just fine and told them everything was fine. I keep wondering that if she’d had a wicked sense of humor, I’d have probably been pretty badly beaten “resisting arrest” while they took me into custody.

Brandon: What advice do you have for beginning photographers?

Marcus: Wow – I could go on all night about that.

First off: think about how you learn best. Some people learn by studying and then trying, others by taking classes, and others by just experimenting. I’ve found that I learn best if I try something and fail a bit, then go do my research; that way when I’m reading, I have already got some practical hands on with what I’m reading about. Taking classes is a huge acellerator if you learn well by doing, but – again – I find that if I try (and fail a bit) before I take a class, when I take the class I’m mostly reinforcing and fixing what I’ve already learned. Anyhow, you need to think about how you learn and get out there and get going.

As one friend of mine once said: “hours in the darkroom can save you minutes in the library”

At the time, I didn’t realize how right he was. Now I realize that was a really profound observation.

And, of course, don’t worry too much about your gear. The same friend who said the “hours in the darkroom…” thing is an absolute photographic genius – and he loves experimenting. He got into an argument with some guy online and the guy was basically saying that you couldn’t really do good photography unless you had a “pro” camera and blah blah blah. You know the type. Well, my friend started posting these gorgeous scans of platinum contact prints – mostly flowers; they kind of looked like Imogen Cunningham’s still lifes of flowers. Beautiful stuff, simply wonderful. This went on for a while and my friend finally told the guy that he’d been shooting them with a Nokia camera-phone duct-taped to a light stand.

The point of that story is: if you know what you’re doing, you can accomplish amazing things with low-end gear. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can be using high-end gear and still fail. But there’s a “sweet spot” where the complexity of your gear matches your ability, and then you’ll upgrade your skills until you get to the point where your gear is irrelevant. There is this weird contradictory thing that if you’re seriously good you can make great shots just the same if you’re using duct tape and a cam-phone, but in order to GET to the level of experience where you can do that, you can’t get there with just a cam-phone.

Most of the serious awesome photographers I know have all the fancy gear because they got it on the way to getting where they are. And now that they’ve got it – they may as well use it.

Another point about gear is to think of your gear in terms of dollar per year. That’ll get you in the habit of asking yourself “how long will I use this, anyway?

I bought my Hasselblad in 1991 and paid $6,000 for the whole thing. It’s now 2009, so I paid $340/year to have a camea that was perfect for my purposes. It still works fine. In the meantime I’ve gone through 4 digital SLRs. Because they keep getting better. So, I bought a great lighting kit, and a great film camera, and I buy my digital gear used, about a year after it first comes out, which saves me about 20% of the cost.

Why do I care so much about that?

Because – and this is a really important point – do NOT try to talk some model into doing trade for prints if you’re carrying a $4,000 camera. Just don’t do it.

Buy a $2,000 used camera of the preceeding years’ model, and pay your model. You’ll find that you’ll get much better pictures because your model is going to be working for you/with you. If you’re Irving Penn or someone like that, then “trade for prints” might mean something, but you really need to ask yourself if your prints are worth trading for. Most models would rather have next month’s rent in their pocket when they leave your studio, than your earnest experiments with lighting technique.

And, of course you should shoot a lot. But if you want to improve quickly, shoot with a sense of purpose. Give yourself an assignment, and complete it. Then review your work and assess it coldly and clinically. If you’re just shooting because you have a camera in your hand, you’ll wind up with thousands of “tourist photos” or “look! tits!” glamour shots. There’s nothing wrong with either of those, but ask yourself first if that’s what you want to be doing.

Last, but not least: do not tolerate censorship. Censorship, in any form, is establishing the basis that someone can arbitrarily say “I don’t like your art, so you can’t show it publicly.”

Fuck that. Fuck them.

Brandon: Thank you very much for your time, Marcus.

Marcus: My pleasure.

—

Check out Marcus Ranums art work here:  
http://mjranum.deviantart.com/

As well as Marcus’ stock work here: 
http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/

Picture of Marcus courtesy of Michael Helms. Check out his work at 
http://pelicanh.deviantart.com/

Thanks again for your time, Marcus. It was a truly enlightening experience.