- [Instructor] In this movie, let's take a look
at a few anchoring examples
so that we can really integrate this principle
into our own work.
And let's start off with a photograph
of my daughter, Sophia.
So here we have Sophia at Glacier Point
holding her skateboard,
her face looking up towards the sun.
And I love this photograph,
obviously because she's my daughter,
but I also just love this beautiful moment.
Now when I was there I said, "Hey, Soph,
can I capture a photo?"
And you know what she said, of course, right?
"Dad, seriously?"
I think it's tough being a photographer's kid
because the photographer always wants to take pictures.
The kids don't necessarily want to.
She was not into it.
And the reason I mention that
is often when we're photographing people,
we need to tune into this because it's really fun to capture
and create photographs,
but it's not always so fun to be photographed.
It's a hard thing to do.
So I said, "Sophie, here's the deal.
We got this. All I need you to do is to go out
and step on that white line
and hold your skateboard in your right hand.
Close your eyes, look up at the sun."
And she was like, "Okay, I can do that."
So she went out there, she stood on the line.
Once she anchored down on that line,
you could tell she felt confident,
she knew what she was doing,
skateboard was in her right arm,
face up towards the sun.
I created the photograph and we were on our way.
And so this anchoring principle,
what it can do
is it can give people the sense of accomplishment
in a space, which is the space of being photographed,
which can be very uncertain
and very like, "Am I doing this right or not?
Am I successful here or am I a failure?"
Let's look at another example.
This is another friend Justin, he's a hat maker.
And we were at this kind of cool location
and I said, "Justin, I got to capture a photograph of you."
And he did not know what to do with his hands,
his feet, his arms, anything.
So I saw this old ladder, I threw it out there,
and I just said, "Hey, just put a foot on the ladder,
hand on the ladder,
then maybe just look off to the side here a little bit."
And he went over,
he went to that anchor point.
You can see he feels fine and great,
and it's kind of a cool photograph.
In another case, photographing a model,
I had her lean on the door,
and leaning on the door of the car
and kind of leaning towards me
because I thought the light was so beautiful there.
And again, the anchor point is that touchdown element
where her arms are on the car,
and it helps people relax.
I think it helps them remove a little bit of tension.
Now, in this case, it's kind of a warm and beautiful look,
but you can also go for a bit of an indie vibe
like here with a different model, Alana.
I said, "What if you kind of lean back against this wall
made out of pennies here
and kind of tilt your head a little bit?"
And in this case, again she's still anchored,
she's still calm, but we have a different story
or different intention.
And here I'm trying to tell something
a little bit different.
Again, remember the posing isn't right or wrong,
but it really depends
upon what you want to communicate and convey.
Here's another example with the same subject.
In this case, I had her lean
on this kind of random pole that I saw,
and I just thought it was kind of fun
to have her sort of lean into something.
And again, an anchor point.
Here, the anchor point on the left is a ladder,
on the right, an artist, his hand against the window.
My late mentor, great friend Rodney Smith,
leaning on his,
he has this kitchen door in his house
that half of it opens up
so he's just leaning on that.
And then the image on the right,
the anchor point is obviously the shoulder and the hand.
Just Downtown New York and it's a skyscraper
and she's just leaning against that.
Sometimes anchors are physical objects
like buildings or doors or other things.
In other situations, it might be something
that you have in your hand.
So on the left, you can see my friend Jeff
holding that surfboard.
It kind of gave him something to do
rather than just stand there and kind of feel dumb.
On the right, we have the lean against the wall.
And then a couple more illustrating this idea
of holding something.
So Robert Gupta, famous violinist holding his violin.
And then on the right, my mom holding paintbrushes.
So an anchor point can be anything that we're touching,
and sometimes the way we touch things can be as simple
as leaning on a doorway, or a foot on a door,
or leaning into a blanket,
or it can be being near something that we value.
In the next two photographs,
this is Michael Pollan,
a famous thought leader and author,
that I photographed just last week.
And here he's holding a very important plant
to him on the left.
And he loved holding that plant,
he loved talking about the story of that,
and so then that gave him this anchor point.
And then on the right in his kitchen,
you can see that hand is leaning against the countertop.
And so the fun thing about this technique
is that it can be a wonderful starting point
if you're working with subjects
that just don't know what to do.
They're not models and they don't know how to stand
or how to move,
just ask them
to do something which involves an anchor point.
And the last two images
illustrate this in a different scenario.
Here I have a yoga teacher on the left,
I rolled a rock out onto the beach
and I said, "What if you stand on the rock
and do a yoga pose?"
Which she did.
And then the image on the right is one of yours truly, me.
And I had seen this sign
and my friend who I was mentoring and teaching,
we were talking about how do you photograph signs
and then how do you get people involved?
And I said, "Well, let me show you this.
Let me just hop up there
and let me show you how if I'm anchored in the scene,
it can bring the image to life in a new way."
And he did that, he photographed me and I photographed him.
And I think it's a great picture.
He did an amazing job.
But again, the anchor point is that touchdown element.
And what I wanted to do
by showing you all these various images
is to show you that this is a broad concept
which you can apply in so many different ways.