Fred
Putting your post here into the context of your reply to my Duffy link, wondering about the apparent lack of soul in today's tightly processed top imagery, I believe you answered the question yourself just here. Other people may want to see the pics befor PP.
That is probably what makes the difference between then and now.
Then, most people I knew just wandered off with the clothes and the girl(s) and did their thing. I quote Helmut: "In Paris, they let us out into the streets like mad dogs." And that's the reality of how it was. I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times an AD actually came to a shoot; his job was to explain to me - and others - what he wanted. After that, it was model and snapper. The relatively little magazine work that I did was more complicated because there were more insecure people trying to prove their different jobs were essential to the running of the mag, so they came along and fucked it up, as seems to be the way it goes everywhere now.
In my opinion, you can place much of the blame on the introduction of digital, because even the purely photographic side of a shoot has had to grow, as has the non-photographer specializations needed to run the electronic show. In my day, an assistant was more of a porter, a mule, and all I ever did as an 'assistant' was print. That's one of the reasons my wife joined the business: her contribution was working with the clothes, holding reflectors, spraying sweat effects onto girls and calming frayed nerves if a client did come along: she was there, there was somebody I respected with whom I could come down from the pressure of holding my tongue in front of a bunch of people who knew nothing.
So yes, I think the difference from the past that you notice is down to the weakening of the importance of the individual visions of the two main players. As they say, a committee designs a racehorse but produces a camel.
Rob C
