September 08, 2007 – Robert Morrissey Photographer & Inventor
Rob M: The thing is, if we had somebody who was model quality or model hot, then all of a sudden you’re selling sex and that’s not exactly what we’re selling here. I’m trying to help people live better lives and visualize themselves. The last thing we want to do also is put out there that we only photograph hotties and hotties only have the ability to rotate.
Rob: I’m not even going to say anything about that.
Erin: We should move on.
Rob: Rotating hotties. Anyway, so the marketing schools of thoughts right now is it’s all about the beauty of the person in there. So, you’re saying that’s all wrong?
Rob M: ‘m saying it depends on what you’re selling. It’s like jewelry. If you’re going to sell a ring on a hand, you want a pretty hand. You don’t want a hand…
Rob: No fungus…
Rob M: Exactly. The average person on the Internet looks at a photograph for a few seconds. If it’s in a magazine, they’ll actually flip within an eighth of a second. So, you don’t have a lot of time to grab people’s attention span and advertise to them. I guess the old school of thought used to be, yea, let’s use hotties because people all look at hotties. If we take a great look at what’s out there in magazines, it’s an entire cesspool of super over attractive, Photoshopped, unrealistic looking people.
Erin: You know, I am so glad you said that. As an American woman-thank you for setting it straight. At the end of the day, especially as women looking at magazines, we know this isn’t how they really look. It’s not clicking somewhere deep in our subconscious because we still feel the need to live up to this unattainable image of women. I want to know, from a professional photographer’s perspective, what goes into a photo shoot for a supermodel?
Rob M: Well, first off, is identification of the person that’s going to be used, which that could be from a two-three hour process of shipping 40 or 50 people in front of you to a 3 or 4-week process where we see hundreds of people. Then we actually test that person up under light and we make sure that they look better in photographs and you’ll find that lots of people that are very photogenic are actually a little sallow in their face. Their bone features show up more. They’re very…
Rob: Anorexic?
Rob M: Not anorexic, but highly bonular.
Rob: Bonular? I don’t think that’s a word.
Erin: Like high cheekbones.
Rob M: Well, just skinny.
Rob: Ah, so it is about skinniness.
Rob M: It is about skinniness. The truth is we do gain several pounds when being photographed, but that’s because we’re a 3-dimensional object being photographed in a 2-dimensional plane. So, the widest portion of that body becomes the sideline.
Rob: I’m 4-dimensional.
Erin: So, you test their underlight and then if she passes the test…
Rob M: Then, if she passes the test, then we hire in stylists, which are professional make-up artists and we also hire stylists for the hair. If the set needs to have special attention, we bring in stylists for the set. We build a completely artificial world and place a completely gorgeous person that’s passed hundreds of scrutinizing tests into that photographic situation and we paint them up very nicely. We make their hair flawless. We take a photograph that probably takes 5-8 hours for just that one photo. And then we spend two days Photoshopping it.
Erin: I know. I was actually in a shoot once. I used to write for a magazine called Cosmo Girl magazine and we did a shoot and I had gotten an award from them or something and did like a real shoot and then my husband picks me up and his first words to me were something to the effect, “You look like an alien.” Because I have green eyes and they had completely made up my green eyes so much that it looked like I could melt things. I looked in the mirror and I said, “I do look like an alien.” It’s just crazy.
