Archive for the ‘Portraits’ Category
Went to an arts event at Casablanca in East Grinstead tonight. Grabbed these outside. Wish I could remember the guy’s name in the first picture but I can say he was a very good singer and story teller. (Edit) His name is Xavier.
This guy is David Dempster who is a great fiddler.
Sometimes I can become quite obsessed with a face especially when it is one of my own children. These two were shot a few days apart in the last 10 days or so.
A.K.A. Ludwig Amadeus.
Is a very good London based musician
who I spent a few hours with recently shooting.
We had intended to get some shots up on a roof in Central London but the rain that day put paid to that idea. These were shot in a pretty cramped flat in Shepherds Bush but we had more control over the weather there.
Aled and Tommy
Thanks to a booking that didn’t happen I had my student Aled with me who had come along to assist last night. He has this amazing Tommy gun. Couldn’t resist really.
I was going to write “by popular demand” but I didn’t think one email would justify such language. But I did get one request so that is a good enough excuse so I am hereby posting the “evil” Gary Byrne which I have now come to prefer anyway.
the evil gary byrne
Gary Byrne
Sometimes being a geezer and a photographer is tough. As a photographer I think this guy is really good looking but as a geezer it just isn’t something I would openly admit. Such is life. Mr Byrne came to ARTS House today to meet someone. While he was waiting I grabbed about three minutes with him in the studio. We made eight shots. Any one of those eight could have been the chosen one. In the end I narrowed it down to two; the one above where he looks kind of like a good guy and another where he most certainly looked like a bad guy. It was a toss up. I chose this one mainly because I usually would have chosen the other.
So what of the 365 you ask. Well it’s back. Sort of. I like the project far too much to just drop it but I’m not going to continue it with subjects that aren’t really my bag. So if I don’t get to shoot someone or something that I want to shoot then I won’t post one for that day. It is still a 365 project but it might take 465 days to complete.
The project has a lot of value to me personally but it was becoming too expensive to maintain. It has already achieved a purpose I didn’t have for it which is to show me where my main interests are. These happily coincide with what I want to trade. But there have been many days where I was shooting stuff for the project that was not the kind of thing I want to trade. So I had some choices to make. I didn’t want to be posting stuff on my main website that I didn’t want to be shooting professionally. And I didn’t really want to start posting the 365 stuff somewhere else after having started it here. So the above is a workable compromise for me.
Blue 2
Continuing my “blue period” we have this offering made after watching half of Sin City. Shot with three strobes two of which were gelled with blue and red. The third was really only used for firing one of the others that was slaved. I’m seriously impressed with how cool I can make the old rubber face look.
Petroula
Did a headshot session today for Petroula Kaneti-Dimmer. The above was my favourite. Just got through editing.
Headshot sessions are interesting but I have discovered they are not the same as portrait sessions and the end results might be very different. With headshots my own likes and dislikes don’t come into it. They are made for a specific audience the actor wants to communicate with. My job is to help the actor communicate and to keep myself out of the way as much as possible. So I don’t do anything that would in any way render the sitter unrecognisable! The only processing is contrast and colour tweaks and a black and white conversion which is the accpeted form in this country.
With portrait sessions it is me who is communicating something about the subject to the viewer rather than just being a relay point. Portrait sessions are more fun for me and usually the sitter too. With headshots there is a certain amount of wondering what will work for the casting directors who aren’t there to consult.
With portraits I please myself first and hopefully but not necessarily the sitter too. But we are both there and can discuss the point and look at the current results and see if we are heading in the right direction. I want my sitters to like my work but it isn’t absolutely vital because if they chose me to shoot them they have a pretty good idea of what they’ll be getting. And if they didn’t choose me then I chose them and so may be only shooting for me anyway.
It is true I will not make any money if the sitter hates the work but I’m finding that if I consult the sitter more than myself we both end up with results that are less interesting.
The reason I like this one is that it is closer to a portrait than the others I shot today. And by that I mean that it shows Petroula in a way I would like to show Petroula.
I wonder if this post made any sense to anyone other than me….
Linnie
Last time Linnie stayed at ARTS House near East Grinstead she was subjected to this. So this time when she asked for something a little more becoming of her I had to oblige. This is a somewhat truer likeness.
Bram
Not Stoker, although he does have some similar characteristics such as getting a bit flappy late at night. No this is Bram whose surname I don’t know. But he is a Dutchman currently staying at ARTS House near Sharpthorne and thus has fallen victim to my way with a camera.
Pupak
Forest Row artist Pupak Haghighi-Brinch. This is the second session with Pupak. I could do many more.
I wrote some time ago about shooting portraits and at the time I pondered the idea of making one ultimate image that would be the last word on that particular person. Today that idea seems even more ridiculous to me than I thought at the time of that writing. There are so many people I could spend hours shooting just because I like them as people and want to make interesting pictures of them. Part of it is making pictures and another part is getting to know someone.
Hillary
Hillary is a teacher. She is staying at ARTS House for the weekend up from Devon. At first she approached the sitting with all the enthusiasm of a trip to the dentist. So we chatted about teaching and football for a bit and she relaxed considerably and I got this which I’m really pleased with. I hope she will be too.
I processed it to adjust the palette and contrast
Susanne Lawrence
Susanne Lawrence is an artist who lives somewhere between East Grinstead and Tunbridge Wells.
Count Baron Von Alucard
This is a portrait of my father the Count Baron Von Alucard. You can find out more about him on his website.
Liz Lets Loose
Yesterday you saw Liz on one of her few and far between better days. Today I’m aftraid she reverted to form after drinking some camomile tea.
And today is day 50 of the project. It has gone remarkably fast. I’m very glad I started the project. It has so far been the very best creativity exercise I’ve ever done. I am much more familiar with my kit and with the whole process of image making. It is amazing how fast I can now go from the idea to the shot in the can. I can place lights and get their settings right in about the same time a waiter can lay a table with cutlery. Well maybe a little slower but not that much.
I have learnt many things in the last 50 days. One of which is that I am pretty much uninspired by inanimate objects. I can shoot them but I have to work at it. Whereas with people it comes very easily.
I have also found that scenes are a lot of fun. Noir lighting is great fun. Lighting on two or more planes in the picture gives great depth and separation of image elements. I often like to restrict the colour palette and go for comic book type images.
If you’re a shooter and have wondered about doing a 365 but haven’t I can heartily recommend it.
Edit: Just found out that 48/365 was chosen as 1 out of 2 favourites for the month on the Digital Photo Experience blog. The guys that run that blog are way up there so this is a pretty cool thing for me. You can see the post here.
Dave Press
Dave Press is an amazing guitarist. I am proud to say that this is the first shot of a series I will be making over the coming weeks that will amount to the first of my unusual local people projects. The idea of the project is to create a feature type profile of local people that interest me.
This picture wasn’t shot in the store room of the local guitar shop but in Dave’s living room. He has quite a collection that aren’t all shown here. But more interesting than his collection is his playing. He is a virtuoso in many genres of music. Go check out his website or better still catch him live.
Wolfgang
We had just done a fairly standard, safe, profile portrait and then I switched the lighting and props around so as to get this. Quite like it.
Pupak Haghighi-Brinch
This is Pupak. A very interesting lady who got a group of local artists in the Ashdown Forest area together and helped them form a group to facilitate collaboration and help each other with marketing and such. We met today and had a talk about how we might help each other. There will quite possibly be more to come on this in the coming weeks. Then we made some pictures. This is one of my favourites.
Saw Max today. He begged me for another portrait. I eventually gave in. Then he spent an hour and a half in make-up and another hour getting his hair just right.
At the end of that he was so excited he just wouldn’t keep still. So I told him to meditate on the meaning of his life. After about 15 minutes he settled into a contemplative mood.
We exchanged some thoughts on philosophy and then listened tothe radio for a bit. We heard about the election being announced today and Gordon Brown saying “the future is within our grasp”. Max was immediately gripped with the profoundness of this thought. And I got this.
"The future is within our grasp"
Selma is a guest in East Grinstead from Holland. Her mother recently featured here and her father may do as well some time soon.
Selma
The family are staying at the best guest house in the East Grinstead area, ARTS House, which also just happens to be where I live.
The shot was made with an SB24 flash at camera left. It was snooted and aimed at the side of her face. The window at camera right provided the fill. There was some work in photoshop to limit the palette and bring out the colours.
Very close to the East Grinstead Rubgy Club lives a man who, well, let’s just say lives a man called Andy. I want to keep this site family safe.
Andy
I have had this idea for months if not a year. I’m planning on shooting and writing about some local people and businesses and publishing the results on a special page here.
The kind of people I want to do this with will be local to East Grinstead or at least within say a 45 minute drive. They will be eccentric or unusual in some way. They collect dinosaur toenails or have a business selling used parts for Ford Anglias or what have you.
I want to show and celebrate the diversity of people and interests in this part of Sussex.
None of the subjects will be charged for the shoot.
If you know of someone you think ought to be included let me in the comments or through the contact page.
Liz
At last I got to shoot my good friend Liz who I’ve wanted to shoot for the last two years. And yes I acknowledge at last someone who is a pleasure to look at rather than myself.
How did it come about? Well Liz finally figured she needed to get a handle on social media and would need a profile pic for this and some others for her web site. She teaches German to English speakers and English for German speakers and is very good at it
here's looking at me
Well what can I say? No client shoots today. Got some bookings but currently all after Easter. Some interesting ones in East Grinstead and Forest Row and another in Turners Hill. So lots more marketing to do. That is becoming easier now that I’m figuring out what is working and what isn’t.
So without anyone else around I had to shoot myself. That is a pretty tricky thing to do. You have to focus and compose, light and direct all alone. Then you chimp and adjust, chimp and adjust, till you get it right. Much faster with a good subject. This took 15 shots and about 10 minutes. Processing was minimal and took about 2 minutes. Most of the work was in getting the light right. Three strobes; one on the background wall gelled yellow, one from above and behind gelled blue, one from in front bare but snooted to just light around the eyes without spilling over too much.
I’ve been looking at the studio pictures of the ’40s see. You know the ones. They used to send them out to all the fans with a fake signature on ‘em. Anyways so I got to thinkin’. I wonder if a mug like me could do that kinda stuff. So I gives it a try with Thomasz, my Hungarian friend.
You got a light mac?
So it isn’t exactly the same. It isn’t black and white. It has some of my twisted processing going on in there too but it works for me.
I hadn’t seen Des to talk to for at least 10 years. We met today by chance and later organised a session which took place around 11:30pm. This was one of several keepers.
Des
What is a portrait?
This is going to be one long post. If you aren’t an artist you’ll probably be better off skipping it. If you are an artist you might still be better off skipping it but you may find it interesting anyway as you may have had some of the same considerations. If you’re a prospective client you might gain an insight into some of what is different about me as compared to other photographers.
This is going to ramble a bit. I’m thinking it through as I go along. If I thought it through and then re wrote it I think it might lose something in translation.
What is a portrait? Well many dictionaries say it is a “likeness of someone, especially one showing the face, made by a painter or photographer.”
Hmm “especially”? Does that mean a picture could still be a portrait without showing the face?
Maybe. If I accept the idea of “likeness” first then I might be able to make a portrait by showing other parts of the body but excluding the face. That might be an interesting challenge. But it isn’t what I wanted to write about.
For some a portrait is any picture showing the head and shoulders of a person whether it be formally made or just a snap of the moment shot.
So it obviously means different things to different people. That could just render the word useless because none can agree on what it is.
But then it does mean something to me and as this is my website and as you might be looking at this site with a view to possibly having me make a portrait then my opinion on the subject, it seems to me, perhaps, maybe, is worth writing about.
Where am I coming from? Well I have studied some art history and I have looked at a lot of paintings and photographs and I have looked at the business practices of a lot of photographers. The end result was a bunch of confusion and the writing of this post is supposed to help me clarify my own thoughts on the matter and perhaps start a discussion on it.
The most obvious and clear distinction between a photograph and a painting is that a painting takes a lot longer to make, usually.
That is not always the case. I’ve made images that began with a 160th of a second in the camera but then took two or three days of work in processing to complete the image to my satisfaction. But that isn’t the usual case in photography, especially “professional portrait photography”.
On the whole the length of time to process film and then to make prints in the chemical age of photography was still a lot less than it took to create a painted portrait. Why is this important? Well time is a scarce resource.
If a painter was going to take the time to create a portrait he could not use that same time for chopping firewood or for baking bread. He therefore needed to get an exchange for his efforts in order to eat. So, if he was skilled and his work was well liked, he could offer his services as a painter to create a painted portrait. He would not as a rule create a series of painted portraits and have his clients choose which one they liked. He was not paid for his time but for his final painting.
In a sense this was a good time for portraiture. It took a lot more than buying a camera and some lenses and having some business cards printed to say you were an artist. Because of the effort and time involved there were fewer incompetents in the field.
In photography it has been very easy to be click happy. We can shoot at 5 frames per second or more during a session. We can have the subject take up several different poses and shoot dozens of frames of each of them. We can go to different locations and do the same kind of thing again and again. In the course of a couple of hours we can make hundreds of different looking frames. Even before the age of digital we would likely shoot several rolls of film in the same way. What this has done to the idea of a portrait is quite profound. It has gone from a one off once in a lifetime proposition to something you could have several times per year with a set of prints for each one.
I am not trying to debate whether this is a good or a bad thing. Economically it is obviously a good thing. It means people can have as many or as few portraits as they want. It also means a photographer can sell more than one image from a session. But I do believe, or perhaps it is just a fixed idea, that a portrait is supposed to be one image that rises above all other possible images. This is the idea I want to examine.
On the one hand it is ridiculous to think you could capture the essence, the ultimate image, of a person at one sitting and have that be the final word on the matter. People change from hour to hour let alone day to day or year to year.
On the other hand you could make an image that many would recognise as capturing the essence of a particular person and I think that is a valid pursuit. Or another goal could be to make a picture that no one will ever surpass. I’m sure that is a valid undertaking even if you never succeed as it pushes you to aim higher.
This discussion also has considerations to do with my pricing model which is very different to most other photographers. I like my pricing model and am very comfortable with it as a pricing model but it creates a conflict in my head nonetheless.
My pricing model is very simple and goes like this; The session is free. The client only pays for those images they want to buy. The session is my investment of time to produce images the client will want to buy. Why on earth should a client have to pay me for my investment without knowing they will get something they like? And why should a client pay for my time at all? They can’t hang two hours on a wall and admire it for decades to come. My time is valuable to me but it is not valuable to my clients. They just want good pictures.
Does this mean I’m cheap? It does if I don’t produce much of value to the client. Whereas if I produce many pieces of work the client just has to have then we both win and the client doesn’t have to take any risks with their money.
This model keeps me sharp. It forces me to work as hard as I know how to produce top notch work. It also forces me to study and work on all aspects of my technique. It also forces me to get into very good communication with my prospective clients to find out what they would really like to have and to let those clients go somewhere else if all they want is a passport photo.
So I like the philosophy behind the pricing model and I think it is morally right.
And I have achieved my purpose in writing this post!
Because the next step was to say that the pricing model says I need to produce lots of good images whereas my ideas on portraiture seemed to say that I must focus on making one exceptional image.
The resolution is this; It is a false purpose to go for making one exceptional image that will surpass all future attempts by anyone else. In order to do that I would have to know far too many things about the future that I couldn’t possibly know. That would lead to a freeze of indecision about how to proceed. My image may one day attain such a status but it is largely out of my hands if it does or not. Another and not unimportant factor is that I am making pictures for clients and not just for myself. It is they who must value the work and not some notion of posterity.
Charlie
This is Charlie of London wedding and portrait photographers Charlies Pictures. Shot with two strobes. One camera left is blue gelled and is fired through a wooden box lid that had some holes in it. It gave an interesting background to a plain white wall. The other strobe is slightly to camera right and is red gelled and snooted to prevent a lot of spill. There was also a window letting in daylight which was between the two flashes. There is a tiny adjustment made to colour balance in Photoshop but this is otherwise straight out of camera.
This is Angelo.
Angelo
A frequent question from sitters is “What shall I do with my hands?” One solution is to give them something to hold. In this case it worked out well. Angelo skimmed the book, a treatise on economics of course, and read passages to me and a discussion was underway. I like to encourage and sometimes goad my sitters into giving me thoughts, rants or anything at all that get’s an emotional or thoughtful reaction. Of course the type of expression I’m looking for largely depends on who the shoot is for and the purpose of the pictures that come out of it.
Meet Max.
sad-max
Not sure if the mood matches the face. But what a face. He’s a wow with the girls.
Aled and Sian came over yesterday for a shoot. Here are some of the shots. These are the English equivalent of high school senior portraits if there is an English equivalent. If there isn’t then I’ll just have to get it started.
Aled was suggesting a good location for a softbox placement.
Sian was real easy to shoot. I placed the chair and she just went straight into this as if she’d been doing it for years.
Another idea straight form Sian.
They only get to see each other in the school holidays as they live about 150 miles apart.
Another from the same day as Orv below. This is Lacey. In fact this is another one I missed when I first looked at what I had.
It has been very slightly cropped and colour balanced but other than that this is straight out of camera. It was made with a single light going through a shoot through umbrella camera left just out of frame.
This was shot around Christmas 2008 but I only just got around to processing it. I had setup in a room and just had people come down and made several pictures of each of them. At the time my only camera was a Fuji point and shoot. It was a terrific session and produced at least four portfolio pictures. That is quite outstanding for me in one session of around 300 total shots.
This one wasn’t even in my first list of likely shots to use. I have long believed (but have seldom practiced with photography) that you shouldn’t edit anything you create for at least a few days. That way you can separate yourself from your thoughts at the time of the shoot and look at the results with a fresh eye. At the time I thought I had a much better shot of this guy but looking at that one now it doesn’t work nearly as well as this one.
It took around 29 attempts to get the pose right. I bashed my shin on the chair several times in the rush to get into position. I’m happier with it than I thought I would be.
Here’s the almost straight out of camera. Actually it went through Camera Raw first and was then cropped a little. But you can clearly see what was done in the processing.
This image was shot in July 2008 and processed on the 1st of August that year. It was a memorable experience for me. My newly developed lighting skills were beginning to show good results and I finally had enough confidence in my lighting and camera setting abilities to actually start looking and paying attention to the subject in front of the lens.
Once into Photoshop I started looking to find more ways of directing the viewer’s attention at what I thought were the important details in the shot, mainly the eyes. So I de-saturated the leaves of the hedge behind the subject and made some other tweaks in the same direction.
This is another from the same session. Different treatment. The first one got the most votes but I kinda like this one too. I like the grittier look.
