TFP (Trade for Print) tips for models

Crystal Mathis

This blog post is written in collaboration with with Crystal Mathis, a Houston model, nutrition health coach, and author.

The TFP is a useful collaboration which at a base-level provides images for both a model and photographer to use for marketing purposes. Hair and makeup artists, designers and studio owners can be part of this deal too. Literal prints are less common today since the maturation of digital photography, and have been replaced with electronic image files.

I use TFP for many reasons and have met some really cool people along the way.

With TFP there is often a balance in skills, or the collab is initiated by the more experienced party. An imbalanced pairing can still work and produce great results.

Paid work usually happens when either the model or photographer is fully dependent on the talent/experience of the other, or the work has commercial applications for a third party.

Why would you model for free?

To build your portfolio, especially earlier on. By blitzing a number of quality TFPs its possible to get a wide range of images in different styles. That way you can narrow down to what you’d like to focus on.

Its also a great way to see which wardrobe and pose ideas work. I’d suggest treating it like a class - spend a session concentrating on one thing and working on it until it is perfected.

Lastly, you’ll get to see how different people work. You’ll figure out how to get the best collaborations for your needs, and who to avoid in the future.

Why would a photographer work for free?

  • To test equipment, lighting or location in preparation for client shoots

  • To experiment with a different style or pivot to a new niche

  • To create new marketing materials

  • To stay sharp during quiet seasons

  • To network

  • For non-profits and charities

  • To feed the hungry Instagram machine with more images than client shoots provide

There are other reasons which are not necessarily bad, but might not get you the highest quality images:

  • When their portfolio has not reached a mature state

  • When their session flow/method/interaction needs refinement

  • They are shooting for fun with no plan or purpose for the session

Finding a photographer with integrity

Given the likelihood of TFPs being arranged through Instagram, there are some easy ways to check their profile to see which photographers will provide a smooth experience:

  • They have a profile picture of themselves (you don’t want to see a profile picture of a young woman, and then an old man turns up on the day)

  • They have a portfolio of images you like/respect

  • A nice-to-have is a link to a portfolio website so you can see more images and read their bio

  • Remember that the phrase “published” or “internationally published” means absolutely nothing when they have paid for publication, or the publication is a poor quality online-only magazine

  • Listing camera equipment in the Instagram bio is a sign they are very new to the game too. Not a deal breaker if their images are good though

The Model Release

A vital part of the TFP is the use of a model release. Copyright law says the photographs belong exclusively to the photographer. Without a release, a model doesn’t really have any promise to receive them. A release provides the terms of use for the model. The pictures are free, so don’t expect to directly profit from them, but do expect to be able to use them for Social Media at the very least.

Here’s an example of the model release I use:

Also, expect a reasonable number of images, and them to be delivered to you in a timely fashion. For example, my one hour TFPs generally produce 10 final images delivered within 7 days. Not getting images from a shoot is unfair and should not be tolerated.

Safety

Importantly, the number one rule is to be safe. There are thousands of really cool photographers out there, so there’s no need to take risks with someone if you see any red flags.

  • Study their images and decide if they are to your taste. You can tell a lot about a photographer’s personality from their portfolio.

  • You can DM people tagged in their photos for a review/reference of them

  • Bring a friend or relative to the shoot

  • Be confident to set boundaries, ask questions and be respected


TFPs are fun, can be hugely beneficial for everyone involved.

Have a plan, and communicate effectively to make sure all parties get great images they can use.

Comment below to share what made a TFP experience awesome, or what to pay special attention to.

How to restore damaged old photographs

Before I describe how I restore old photographs, I’d like to make two important points:

  1. Cherished photos are best printed out. Your hard drive or phone is a graveyard for memories, but a shoe-box of prints in the closet is like treasure.

  2. Take good pictures of the people around you. Take bad pictures. But take pictures. A bad photo of your friends and relatives is much better than no photo of them.

The scan

Scans are great for repairing and sharing, prints are great for archiving.

Scan on the best scanner you can access, but remember that the original photos can be re-scanned in the future on better hardware. Negatives, small or very large prints can be scanned using a digital camera on a copy stand rig. The camera method is much faster than a flatbed scanner and also has the advantage of using the maximum resolution regardless of the original print/negative size. Read more on this method in my blog post on reproductions.

Remove and dust from the negatives/prints with a blower. Its easier to remove duct now than to spend time cloning it out digitally later.

Give the files suitable names, but even better is to create metadata tags with the approximate image date, location and the names of the people in it. This will make searching for the image a breeze in the future - well worth the time investment.

The software

If you do not deal with digital photographs on a regular basis (end even for those who do) I cannot recommend any subscription software. The core tools you will need are a way to invert negative images to positive using curves or an “invert image” function if you have negatives (but if you only have prints this isn’t a must), clone or stamp tool, and a way to selectively change colours in the image, as opposed to altering colour globally on the entire image. Photoshop Elements, Affinity Photo (which is excellent), or even GIMP are perfectly fine. If you have access to Lightroom, this will also work and make batch editing of large numbers of photos easier.

The crop

Always place the prints in exactly the same position for every scan, that way you can crop them all in one batch action at the end, if desired. You can crop the image to its exact frame, crop into the image for a better composition, or just outside of the image to ensure all data is preserved. Remember that a lot of software will permanently crop a JPEG or a TIFF (destructive editing) so be careful with your decisions. Better still, make a copy of images you will creatively crop into for composition purposes. Using layers in PhotoShop or Affinity is non-destructive so you can worry less.

The crop can also include rotating the image to remove unintentional tilts of horizontal and vertical lines (e.g. leveling horizons). An advanced method is to use a transform or perspective correction tool to straighten a photo. As much as I love doing this with my new images, I’m careful to kill the character of an old image with excessive adjustments.

Basic edits

Brightness and contrast should be your first port of call to get the image ready for restoration. You want to see as much detail in the shadows and highlights as possible without clipping the blacks and whites. A lot of these decisions are to taste, but excessive or clipped dark or bright areas need to be avoided.

Pixilation can be an issue with old scans. The example picture of my parents above was scanned more than 15 years ago on a low-end scanner. Its hard to mitigate, but you can use a small amount of blur or denoise to soften the pixel edges. I often make a mask so that eyes and mouths remain sharp, whereas large flat blocks of color get more treatment. You want to avoid a plasticky over-smoothed look.

Colours

A colour calibrated monitor is a nice-to-have for colour work, but you can get pretty far without one. Remember that most monitors are designed to have a blue-tint to fools us in to thinking it is brighter than it its. If you correct colours by eye on a blue monitor, your images will print in a more orange tone than you expected.

A first step is to find a part of the image that is supposed to be neutral (a white table cloth, grey suit, black shoes) and click it with a “White Balance” color picker. This will remove the colour cast from the entire image. Try picking multiple places to see which give the most pleasing result.

Global colour adjustments are tricky because old images fade in different ways. In color negatives, even new film has a purple tint in the shadows. If you corrected for this globally then the highlights will go green, so it needs to be handled delicately. Either split toning can be used (add green to purple shadows and purple to green highlights) or detailed work using a Hue-Saturation-Lightness (HSL) adjustment on an adjustment layer.

Faded parts of the image can be selectively saturated. Red skin can be selectively unsaturated.

Dust/scratches

Restoration work has the same goal as image retouching - to remove distractions. With restorations, the aim is not necessarily to improve the image, rather to get it back to its original level of quality.

Most dust spots can be removed with a healing tool. Use a new layer, call it “healing” and make sure it is set to sample the layers below it. Larger patches of scratches or other damage may require use of the stamp cloning tool to copy pixels from a similar, but intact, part of the image to the damaged part.

Final touches

The image already looks closer to life than the original did, no longer having color casts or distracting damage. You can add some sharpening, but careful not to re-ignite any pixilation.

Export the file as common JPEG or TIFFs, at a reasonable quality. When you’ve spent a lot of time restoring an image, you might want to save a native file for the software you are using so the layers are preserved and can be re-adjusted in the future.

And print your photos.

Contact me if you’d like help restoring or printing your old photos in the Houston area.

Portraits at Houston's Sassafras Recording Studio

I spent an evening with Studio Sassafras owner John, along with staff (and talented vocalists) Hannah and Raychael just before Covid-19 shut down personal interactions in Houston. The four of us spent a few hours getting some of my favorite shots in recent months!

This recording studio, just off North Main Street, is a purpose built construction with a lot of interesting interior scenes, making for a variety of portrait backdrops. From red velvet stage curtains to the consoles and microphones in the control room, we took individual and group shots that brought out the character and roles of these awesome people.

This was another opportunity to shoot some classic black and white film through a Hasselblad 500cm, along with color digital files.

Find out more about these guys and the studio via Instagram: Studio Sassafras, John Ross, Hannah Jans, Raychael Winters

Fine art photos of Houston' s Skyscrapers

Is a picture of a building to the credit of the photographer, or the architect?

I’ve struggled with this question. It’s the same problem I have with taking pictures of a sculpture or fountain.Should I get the credit for a creative photo, , or should the creator of the photo’s subject be the hero? Can I claim credit for someone else’s art?

If someone took a picture of one of my pictures, is it my art or theirs?

There are ways to avoid this problem of pure documentation, all of which involve some added input from the photographer. Dramatic weather, unique light and shadows, creative composition or additional composition elements to name a few.

So during the winter of 2018/2019 I explored Houston’s architecture with an aim of avoiding pure documentation of any single structure. The images juxtapose two or more buildings while at the same time avoiding street-level noise of people, cars and lamp posts. I also tend to avoid the tops of buildings. This simplifies city-scapes into their simplest shaped and lines. Perspective becomes illusive as it is sometimes difficult to tell which building faces which direction. Sometimes the buildings are lined up in such a way that they almost look like a new single structure.

Even in a city as large as Houston, there are finite pairs of buildings that can be photographed in this way. Even so, I don’t think I am anywhere near a complete set.

Below are a few examples from this series of images ‘Dueling Towers’. Fine-art pigment prints using archival paper are available for collectors - please visit the Print Store for more information.


Portraits of Dominika

Dominika is an extraordinary violin player and teacher. She also plays as part of the Axiom Quartet and the Dancewict-Doucet Duo.

For this portrait session we took some close up shots of Dominika with her 19th century violin. This was a hybrid session using a digital camera and a large format camera (the Intrepid 4x5) using black and white film.

Portraits of Sergio

I love meeting people with curly hair like mine so I can bombard them with questions on how they deal with it in the mornings and where they get it cut.

Sergio’s portrait session resulted in some great social media head shots and some full body shots that wouldn’t look out of place if he was interviewed for a magazine.

This was a hybrid film and digital session using a Hasselblad 500cm and a Canon 6D mark 2.