Marc Silber: We are here in on the edge of the San Francisco Bay with our guest Bambi Cantrell, a top tier wedding and portrait photographer. In 2008, she received the Golden Eye Award. In 2007, American Photo magazine named her one of the ten best photographers in the world. She’s authored three best-selling books on photography, and recently she received the cover of Metropolitan Bride for the second time.

Marc: Bambi, thanks for inviting us to your studio for Advancing your Photography.

Bambi Cantrell: You are very welcome. Thanks for coming.

Marc: Now, tell me about your style of photography and the type of work you really love to do.

Bambi: I just don’t think there’s anything more interesting than photographing the human spirit  and I am nuts about people, and I find it’s always changing and, you know, people are never the same and it really has a unique personality.

Marc: What are some of your tips in terms of using light?

Bambi: Lighting is the foundation of everything photographic, in my personal opinion. That’s what you have to start with, learning how to see the world and see what light does. You see, shadows and light, they are what create and give an image its definition, its dimensionality. So, the first thing I do when I walk into a room is I take my hand like this and I start looking at the shadow areas on my hand as I walk around the room and see, “Is there a highlight in the room somewhere? OK, well I can see that there’s a little kicker light coming across my hand on this side from the windows over there, and then the main light is coming from this direction over here”. So, it helps me to see where I want to place my subject in relation to the light source.

Marc: So Bambi, what are sort of the one-two-three steps that you follow when you approach any kind of photograph?

Bambi: I like clean, simple lines. When you look through any of my photography, very seldom do you see a lot of background; it’s not about the location to me, it’s about the face and about the subject. Once I have identified the location where I want my subject to appear, where I want them to be, the most important element that has to go into it is having my subject forget the camera is there, so I really want to take a personal interest in my subject at that point, look into their eyes and talk with them and get them to forget about that monster of camera that’s there, and then really be able to pull from them great expression because at the end of the day, expression beats perfection any day of the week, and if you have the most perfect photograph in the universe it’s a zero if you have no expression from your subjects.

The most important thing for me is to get them to relax. I don’t want them to think about it as a photographic experience. You see, if they start thinking of it (the photographic session) as a photographic entity, I lose their soul, I lose who they are as a person. I really want to draw from them who they are so I quite often will ask them questions about what kind of things do they like to do, what makes them happy, really questions about what’s your favorite color, what do you do for a living, and I pay very close attention to the expressions on their face as I communicate with them, because small things will happen with their mouth or their eyes that will show a little bit of excitement. I find it the more equipment that I have, the more uncomfortable that they become because it becomes a more photographic experience.

Marc: How about camera angles as far as approaching a subject?

Bambi: That’s a very good question. If I’m working with a mature woman I can promise you I’m going to be photographing down on my subject, so I want a higher camera angle. Why? Because women tend to get this little bit of saggy skin under their chin and if I work from a higher camera angle it does two things. The first thing it’ll do is it’ll draw attention to the upper part of the face and not the jaw line, and I won’t see this area of the chin area. The second thing that I’ll do is I’ll have her drop her chin a little bit and look at me with her eyes because what happens when she does that is that looking up with the eyes makes the eyes appear larger. Another good thing too: if I’m working with a heavier subject, a larger person that’s got more bulk, then I’m going to use a higher camera angle and I’m going to have them lean forward to the camera with their chest.

Marc: So what final advice would you like to leave viewers with in terms of improving their photography?

Bambi: I would say learn to find and identify what pretty light looks like. Look for the catch lights in the eyes, look for shadow areas on the face. Is the shadow on the face below the nose or is it up above the nose. Look for the catch lights on the eye. Are the catch lights on the upper part of the eye like at two o’clock or eleven o’clock or are they down below, which is kind of an unnatural kind of light source to look at, and at the end of the day expression rules. Expression over perfection. Don’t make it so hard to get an image and work it to death in such a difficult way that you kill the magic, because at the end of the day it’s about this (face) if you are photographing people, it’s about getting what’s in the soul.

Marc: Bambi, thank you so much for inviting us to your studio and giving us an inside look into your world of photography.

Bambi: You are very, very welcome. Thanks so much for coming.