Martin Schoeller has always been a personal favorite to work with and one thing you will notice on a shoot is the almost hypnotic rhythm he establishes with the film loaders, lights, camera adjustments and direction to the subject. It has a pace to it that lulls you into…

See for yourself here:


[qt:schoeller.mp4 320 180]

From his new book, Female Bodybuilders available at pondpress (here).

Recommended Posts

The Art of the Personal Project: Sara Forrest
Fostering Creativity and Personal Health- MJ68 Productions

17 Comments

  1. I want to be Martin Schoeller when I grow up!! Such an amazing inspiration.

  3. Rob,
    I think a more interesting question is who is Pond Press? are then new?
    there’s only two books on that link.
    Not too big on the bodybuilder portraits. In my opinion, Schoeller does the same stuff over and over with the big heads and then this. When he tries to do “fashion” which I’ve noticed has been creeping into some of the mags i read, his stuff looks more Alec Soth than Martin Schoeller.

    • @J.M. Giordano,
      Pond appears to be run by his agent, Bill Hannigan.

  4. I think it shows the effectiveness of including video at select shoots. Nice to see someone else still shooting large format, the pace and approach of which are so different to smaller cameras.

  5. I love seeing the process of how photographers shoot and this is such a beautiful example. thanks for sharing

  6. That was awesome, thanks!

  7. “The whole shoot should only take about 17 hours, most of which will be spent focusing.”

    Awesome.

    I shoot large format too and that definitely made me laugh.

  8. “dont move dont move dont move” – glad someone else has a repetitive mantra

  9. I always love seeing behind the scenes & what sort of directions is being given, especially from a great photographer like MS.
    Thanks Rob for posting this.

  11. What is the big deal here? Sounds like normal banter to me, except the German accent is cute.

  12. I would have slo-mo’d the whole thing, cut out the dialogue track, and added a music track featuring Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major because, you know, if you’re gonna take the time and effort to (motion picture) shoot something as unexciting as this–and shoot it in a decidely unexciting fashion–you might as well make it boring to the max.

  13. I agree, what is the big deal? I think his big head theme is aged and this video is OLD anyway, so …what’s the big deal. The only thing I see is a subject that has sat too long, that is uncomfortable and tense.

  14. I agree , whats the big deal…when i worked with penn we used 5 deardorfs
    MS has to use a expensive sinar that is so precision and still has to ask them to hold still and check focus…the fasination is that most kids today don’t know how to or have put the hours into a 8×10 especially a wooden one.
    MS learned on the job the same way as annie did at RS, were just jealous that they got one of the 5 chosen spots in the Photography Magazine world.

Comments are closed for this article!