A photographer's interviewing trick

Philippe Halsman was a great portrait photographer for Life magazine (Remember Bruce Squiers' speech?) who shot many celebrities and stars in his day from Marilyn Monroe to Richard Nixon.

There is a link between photographing and interviewing people. Fashion photographer Richard Avedon spoke about how he was given permission to bore into people when they let him shoot them. Nothing is out of bounds. That's a good way to think about questioning people. The trick for photographer and for reporter is to get your subject to let down barriers and fear so that you can really "see" more.

Halsman's technique for doing this was to get his subjects to jump.

Just jump.

And oddly enough they did, including society dames and royalty. It was so unexpected and silly, and seemingly non-threatening that his subjects did as he asked. There is a book of Halsman's jumping picture but that was not the point. What he did in shooting those jumps was loosen up his subjects and get closer to them.