Glamour photos do not do people the same justice that candid photos do.

Cafe Society
1

I’ve thought this for many years.

I have found that with regard to pictures of famous women the pictures that are candid (pictures not part of a photo shoot) are always more desirable/attractive/likeable.

Very seldom are photo shoots done right such that the resulting images make the subject seem more desirable than normal. Mostly they achieve the opposite effect.
Take Emilie De Ravin from Lost. On Lost she’s as cute as a button. Adorable. But I decided to google her and find websites of photos. I succeeded. And what I find is photo shoots which make her look like a typical blue-eyed blonde… nothing special. And then I chalk this up as another example of glamour photography being nothing to … reality.
ETA: What glamour photography seems to do is to remove every trace of individuality and personality from the subject.

2

Of course, there’s no such thing as a candid shot on “Lost.” She has a makeup person, a stylist, a costumer, a camera operator, a director of photographer, a director, and if they’re on “Lost,” they’re probably very good at what they do.

3

Yeah, I very rarely find formal shots sexy, but…

(Speaking as a photographer here) Formal portraits are produced on demand, normally under exacting time restraints. The subject is in an unfamiliar environment and usually nervous.

So a photographer can “manufacture” visual interest by using dramatic lighting and angles, but the photographer can’t force a perfect spontaneous facial expression. You take 100 shots and three or four are nice.

Let the photographer hang out with the subject for three days with a portable studio set up 25 feet away (an Annie Leibowitz technique) and there’s a better chance of getting excellent pictures.

At a wedding or a party, photographers grab people, line them up, and shoot them. The results are usually not good, but if the photographer just tries to take nothing but unposed candids the results are even worse. So photographers working under a deadline manufacture usable shots, rather than risk potentially unusable candids.

4

It might be that in the more candid photos, the women seem more relaxed and comfortable and you find that more attractive than glamour photos were the women are often more posed and thus more artificial-looking. Another thing to consider is the excessive use of air brushing and photo-shopping to remove things like freckles or moles. YMMV but overuse of these photographer’s tools can result in the woman looking more like a mannequin than a human being.

5

I think the best example of this is Marilyn Monroe. A beautiful girl, when she wasn’t plastered with makeup and and doing her ugly “Marilyn Monroe pose.”

Contrast these: Ugh, Ugh, Ugh, which are all supposed to be glamorous and beautiful, but which I think are horrific.

with this: swoon! (yes, I know that’s still a posed shot, but it’s not a “glamour” shot)

or this

or this

This one is strange and interesting.

For unposed (not modeling) shots, I love this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one…

OR

THIS, my all-time favorite Marilyn Monroe picture, totally unposed.

Of her modeling shots, this is one of my favorites. This too. Even though you can’t see her face, I’m enchanted by this one. This one too, it’s haunting.

If I had to pick a favorite glamour shot, it’d be this one. Or maybe this one. This is nice too. Her face is open and not all scrunched up with poochy lips and squinty eyes The openness, it’s what I love.

For someone with such a sad legacy, she sure loved to laugh.

I need to stop. I know there are tens of thousands more and I could keep going on and on. I could spend hours and hours and hours just looking at Marilyn Monroe pictures. I still haven’t found my favorite photos of Marilyn, ones that I saw a long time ago and thought I could easily find again, but not yet I can’t, and I have to go to bed.

Off topic but still Marilyn, I was too young to understand who she was when she died, but this picture gave me some perspective to her fame, it gives an indication of how popular and hounded she was. She’s just doing a bit of shopping, but look at all those people outside looking in. She was beautiful and charismatic and fun and vulnerable and sad and talented (yes she was!) and people couldn’t get enough of her. Just like me, almost 50 years later. A post where I was going to have 2 contrasting pictures, turned into a mild obsession.

So ok, I went slightly crazy there, sorry. Once I start with Marilyn, it’s hard to stop. Many years ago I made a few Winamp skins using Marilyn pictures. They’re crappy (not the pictures, the skins), but boy did I have fun spending hours and hours finding pictures.

Back to the topic, I couldn’t agree more with the OP.

6

You’re allowed to over Marilyn.

And I thought she looked very beautiful in all those shots.

Nor could I. Glamour shots somehow depersonalise the subject :- there seems to be an inevitable “piece of meat” aspect.

7

In the overly-posed category are Maxim magazine, and its ilk. Their photographers have an uncanny knack for taking very hot babes and making them look awful. They always seem to go for the same facial expression, which I describe as “aggressively vacuous”. Doesn’t do a thing for me.

8

Modern stuff I agree, but that guy who did those fantastic black and white glamor shots of the golden age of Hollywood stars … /swoon

Google George Hurrell and just look at the images … wow.

9

Yeah. I don’t know why on Earth you think any shots of someone on a TV show are “candid” in any way.

10

Ditto for Cosmo covers; I have a theory that they have about 5 covers, and when they want to have an actress on they superimpose her eyes on one of the 5, and adjust hair color. And in some cases, they adjust for race.

11

She’s not being posed sitting still as she would in a photo studio, but instead is in motion, so her face and body are captured in more natural expressions.

I think that candid photos have the capability of being far better or far, far worse than glamour shots. With glamour shots you pretty much know what you’re getting.

12

She’s an actress. Every shot is meticulously set up with precise lighting, hair, makeup and often done over and over to get just the right expressions the director wants. Really nothing candid about it.

13

Maxim and other magazines like my GFs InStyle are heavily Photoshopped. To the point that the subjects no longer look like people but more like featureless cartoon characters.

14

Which brings me to another factor that influences how the photograph comes out: the woman herself. This has little–if anything–to do with the actress or model’s physical attractiveness but rather with how well they can “work the camera.” Modeling is often correctly considered to be a fairly vacuous profession but that’s not to say there are not some skills the best models (or actresses who do a lot of photo-shoot work) use to convey expressiveness without it looking fake or overly posed.

That’s my problem with them too. Although, a few years back, there was a Maxim spread featuring (of all people) Lucy Lui that seemed to be an exception to this. I don’t know why but in that one Lui’s individuality and personality actually came through in the pictures and didn’t seem to be photo-shopped and over-posed out of existence.

15

Equipoise: I just want you to know that you have enriched my life. I had never once seen Monroe in “candid” photo before your wonderful post.

Like most everyone else, I agree with the OP. Monroe was far better looking in the candid pics than the 100% staged pictures.

16

Surely that can’t be an original photo? Are you sure that hasn’t been digitally altered quite significantly? My father would have killed for a camera (and processing lab) that could create photos like that, even in the 70s.

17

Huh? No processing is needed to throw the background out of focus, just the right lens and a skilled photographer. I’m sure this image looks as it did when the film was developed.

18

Thanks! I know I loved finding and looking at pictures, and I could have included several dozen more, but it’s nice to know that others enjoyed them too. I know how I felt the first time I saw a non-glamor Marilyn shot. It was a revelation, and that’s what made me a Marilyn Monroe fan, a fan of the real person, not the persona. Even the “posed” real person, as opposed to the far more artificial plastic Marilyn of the glamor shots, was a revelation. I was a toddler when she died, and had known her growing up via two things: the ugly (IMO) “glamor” shots, which I hated, and the knowledge that she was a tragic figure, which was just sad. Seeing her smiling, laughing, enjoying herself, being real (even if posed) was a revelation. I’m glad I could introduce that aspect of Marilyn to you. Seriously, thank you for telling me.

I see that gaffa beat me to it. I can’t say I know anything about that specific photo, but I don’t think there’s anything digitally altered there. If you doubt, you could start a thread and I’m sure photographers would weigh in.

19

Same here.

What can I say, I believe in giving props where due.

20

It was more the colour than anything else, compared to every other photo of that era. But I’m quite happy to accept that it was just a fluke of a great shot and leave it at that. It wasn’t really pertinent to the thread anyway; I thought afterwards that I shouldn’t have mentioned it, as it was kind of hijack-y.