Fashion photos with vibration (16.10.2013)

Fashion and commercial photographer Madis Palm says that when photographing fashion and other lifestyle subjects, it is crucial to have good taste.

"You have to sense what is esthetical and timeless and what is tasteless and tacky. You can technically be very good, never a take a photo that is not sharp but your photos won't speak to anyone if they don't have a sense of eternity in them," Palm says. The fact that there is a model in the photo who is dressed and has a hairdo, doesn't mean that it is a fashion photo. "The author's attitude, his special "vibration" makes photo a fashion photo. Look at Terry Richardson for example, all his photos have flash right in the face but this man has so much attitude that it makes him one of the world's leading fashion and lifestyle photographers."

As a child, Palm was tormented by massive drawing habits and at some point it became obvious to get acquainted with photography. "I filled up the papers so fast with different storylines that every day, my parents had to bring me a new "canvas" when they came home from work. Often, the only places to draw were the graph papers and the edges of the prescription forms," Palm recalls his drawings that looked like distant predecessors of comics. The interest in drawing later grew into an interest in film. "At the beginning of the 90s, it wasn't possible to learn it from Youtube and after I failed to go to the entrance exams of the film school, I smuggled myself into Estonian Television where I met my first teacher, wonderful television cameraman Ilmar Loomann," Palm says. There, he quickly learned that the tripod and camera are awfully heavy, that every time you want to take the camera out from the television building, you need to sign a lot of papers and the batteries usually die the exact moment you have the tripod ready. "And so I tried to bring my "film scripts" into life by doing still frames with my photo camera and putting these together as stories. I noticed that the still frame needs to be a lot more expressible than the moving frame to pass on the content and mood of the story," he says. To find out more about the photo, Palm went to work as a photographic technician but discovered soon that earning money for someone else is not for him. "I found a way out by getting an opportunity to learn photography in Tartu where I was then living. During my third year at the college, I did my first commercial job that was photographing the labels of can soup and after that, I haven't done anything else not even for a day," he adds.

His passion for drawing, painting and film art has definitely affected the content as well as the form of his photographs. "At first, I was drawn to photography because of the human productions. The bigger and fancier the production, the better," Palm recalls; his role model at the time was Peter Greenaway. Photographing the editorials of fashion magazines was the perfect output for him. "I have never been a good "photographing inside the drawer" type of guy, I want my works to be needed in reality, “ says Palm who is also interested in the painting from the Low Countries like Vermeer, Rembrandt and Caravaggio. "But in the dynamic 90s, I was also fascinated in everything new that came from the West: The Face magazine has surely been leading me a lot on my way of becoming a fashion photographer. While learning drawing at the art school we had this joke among course mates that even though there was model in front of us, we were still drawing ourselves!" says Palm who is dedicated to commercial and fashion photo. He adds that the works of the photographer tend to look like him; it doesn't matter whether you photograph the stars or the "stars".

For Palm, the most memorable shoot has been his second fashion series for the Stiil magazine. "The first fashion photo series was also my diploma thesis. My tutor and now, my good friend Herkki-Erich Merila was holding my hand, the stylists and the rest of the team were very supporting and forgiving. The photos received a lot of positive critique and people are today still saying that that was one very good series. When I prepared for my second fashion series shoot, I was alone. It wasn't appropriate to ask anyone what they thought about a certain idea, whether that model was good and so on. I was a rookie in the glamour world. The expectations were high, I had to prevent the "second album" syndrome to happen. The shoot was hard, I had chosen a dusty basement for the location and the model was allergic to dust. I still get along with her as well... and this is one of my favourite photo series through the time,“ Palm recalls.

Palm photographs with Nikon D4. „Often it is thought that the life of the press photographers is difficult – everything has to be fast, comfortable quality, bullet proof. I would say that the only place where I have not photographed yet is under water – yet!“ he adds. The quality of the camera is crucial in his work. “Wars repeat themselves, when you fail, there will be new opportunity, houses burn, people run holding Kalashnikovs; but if you miss the opportunity to get a perfect portrait or fashion shot, it’s gone.“ According to Palm, the new Nikon D4 is the first camera that makes him feel that in addition to being a camera it’s also a helper and you can sense how it does everything in its power to get a good photo.

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