Father and son. At a photo shoot for the Austin Lyric Opera. Camera: Kodak
DCS 760. Lens: Nikon 105 defocus coupling. Light: Profoto tungsten, 6 foot
diffusion panel.
I
7.24.2010
That Looks Good Enough to Eat
That Looks Good Enough to Eat (originally written in 2008 for www.prophotoresources.com)
Much of my day to day work involves photographing people. I photograph executives. I photograph workers on production lines. I photograph people doing the things they do in every day life. And I photograph people to see how they look when they’ve been photographed. But sometimes I photograph things other than people. My next favorite subject is food. I’ve been photographing food every since I was thrown into a fabulous cookbook project by an editor at Texas Monthly Press back in 1982. The book was a comprehensive look at the best Mexican food in Texas, created in such lofty venues as The Mansion on Turtle Creek (Where the valets kindly asked me to park my disintegrating and ancient Volkswagen bug around the back in the employees’ parking lot), El Mirador in San Antonio, and, of course, Fonda San Miguel in Austin, Texas.
Back then I knew the rudiments of lighting with strobes and I was okay at mixing daylight with strobe but I’d never shot a plate of french fries, much less a beautifully presented bowl of Tortilla Soup. A week before I left for the job I read every book I could find on the subject. There were very few and they were mostly written in the 1950’s and 1960’s with much emphasis on eight by ten inch view cameras and thousands of watts of tungsten light. What I gleaned in my research was how important it was to keep everything in sharp focus. As Grandpa Simpson (The Simpsons/Fox TV) would say, “That was all the fashion in my day.” The other two things I learned that have worked over the years are: 1. Food looks better if the main light is big and relatively soft. 2. Food looks better is the light comes from at least a 90 degree angle from the camera and preferably from slightly behind and above the food.
Over the next two decades, on the strength of that bestselling cookbook that eventually went into five editions, including a paperback, I have been called on repeatedly to shoot food. There have been some massive changes in the equipment we use now and even more profound changes in the style and look of food photography. The look has evolved from an ethic that kept everything on the table in sharp focus to a look were only a sliver of the featured dish need be in focus at all. Gone are any visible lighting artifacts such as sharply defined shadows or bright specular highlights. Now food is lit to emulate the effect of gentle, north light cascading through a large, conveniently placed window.
My four by five inch view camera is long gone. My camera of choice for food is my old Kodak SLR/n, one of the few 35mm style digital cameras that did not employ an anti-aliasing filter. No reason to worry about moire when shooting food.……. But lately, for expediency’s sake, I’ve been using a D300 and have general been pleased with the results. Plus it plays well with dedicated flash.
And speaking of flash, my collection of Profoto Strobes and their attendant accessories have been relegated to semi-retirement in my equipment closet. When I go on location to shoot food for editorial clients my lighting kit looks light this: One SB-800 flash, three SB-600 flashes, one SU-800 wireless controller, one forty-eight inch white, pop up diffuser. One piece of four by four foot white foamcore and plenty of batteries.
(photo: Four Seasons Dessert.)
The camera/lens combinations I’ve used for the images showcased here is mostly the Nikon D300 with a 70-300 VR lens, or the 16-85mm VR lens. I also pack the new Nikon 60 AFS macro lens for extreme close-ups or situations when I need very narrow depth of field with very high sharpness. That’s really it. All this stuff fits into on Think Tank Airport Security case. Of course there is a stand bag with a motley collection of stands, stand adapters, an arm to hold my diffuser and a small Velbon carbon fiber tripod.
So, on to the shooting. Editorial food shooters really do most of their work from 2pm till about 5:30pm. Most restaurant people aren’t up early enough to do anything coherent in the morning and evenings are when they make the bulk of their income. We tend to slide in after lunch and slide back out a bit before the first seating at 6pm.
The first thing on my agenda is to get with the chef and explain just what the magazine and I are interested in. I really try to resist heavy handed art direction because I think it is important that the food be a realistic representation of what our readers can expect when they go out for a meal. Once the chef and I are on the same wavelength we establish a time line for the shoot. The last thing I want is a manic chef bringing out a ton of food at once. A shoot can only go so fast and I never want to shoot a plate that’s not hot and fresh. Ten minutes out from the kitchen and the food just seems to die on the plate. Once we’ve established our timing I start my process by looking for a good background, because when I’m shooting tight on the food the only things that will show are the food, a small bit of the table top or shooting surface and whatever background I’ve chosen. (photo: Driskill Hotel. Dessert)
With the background selected I drag an appropriate shooting surface into position and stick a plate that will match the “hero” plate into place. I’ve done these kinds of tight, one plate, “hero” shots often enough that I’ve developed a routine for the lighting set up. I start by placing my large, white pop up diffuser on a arm, attach it to a short light stand and place it as close to the plate as possible 90 degrees to the side of the camera position. It’s important not to tilt the diffuser over the food because you will inevitably get broad, bright reflections on the plate. In most set ups the plane of my diffuser is inches away from the side of the plate.
I place an SB-800 six feet away from the diffuser and use the zoom feature on the flash to tighten the beam so that it efficiently lights the surface of the diffuser with very little spill. That’s all there is to the main light. I may tweak it after I see how it works with the food but it’s usually just right. I hate using a second lighting instrument for fill so I rely on a white foamcore board or an additional pop up reflector place on the opposite side of the plate to bounce back some of the main light to open up the shadows. I’m a sucker for a nice dark, dramatic shadow so many times I’ll back the bounce fill away four or five feet from the set.
When the main light and the fill are set I turn my attention to the background light. This light fulfills three requirements: 1. Lighting the background adds depth to the shot. 2. Lighting the background provides valuable separation between the hero and the rest of the image. 3. Used correctly the light will fall off from side to side and from top to bottom and provide a nice vignette for the main subject. The background light is usually a Nikon SB-600 used on the little plastic foot that comes packed with the flash. If I need it a bit higher I’ll use a stand or just place the flash on a convenient chair. Then I go back to the camera position, pop a frame and evaluate the effect. The background light generally requires the most finesse and careful attention needs to be paid to the spread of the light so that the beam opens up the space around the hero but still drops off sufficiently around the edges of the frame. Once the background light is set you are 90% done with your lighting and any additions at this point are just accent lights.
With delicate entrees that have some height to them I always like to bring in a third light that acts as a backlight. This light should be much weaker than the other two and should just showcase the translucency in delicate greens and other food stuff. It can also provide a nice (hopefully subtle) edge lighting to the entrée to increase the snap or overall contrast of a shot. Beware of lens flare from this one. When I use a lens with a complex amount of air/glass interfaces like the 16-85 mm Nikon zoom I have to carefully shield the front element of the lens from any backlight or it will flare and reduce the overall contrast of my scene. A snoot made of black aluminum foil or a grid attachment on the front of the flash is an effective way to focus the backlight and limit spill light.
When the last light is in place you test until you are certain you’ve got what you want and then you have the chef bring out the first plate. If you have a good collaboration the chef will make you two plates. The first is the the “stand-in” and you’ll use it to fine tune your lighting and composition. You’ll also be able to evaluate the direction the plate should be turned in relation to the camera to best show off the food. Now is the time to tweak composition by raising or lowering the camera to best look into the bowl or plate. When everything is ready you’ll signal the chef to “plate” the hero and bring it on to the set. Have a clean towel and some toothpicks standing by. The towel is to wipe off any errant spills or fingerprints while the toothpick is there to gently pull at small parts of the presentation that might need to be moved a bit or “fluffed”.
Now shoot like crazy and bracket a bit while the food is hot, fresh and juicy. After you have the keeper you pre-visiualized try changing camera angles and camera heights. Also try to zoom in and get close on a detail that may act like “shorthand” to describe the entire dish without having to show the entire dish. If you and the chef have both done your jobs well the actual shooting should take five minutes or less.
Camera settings: We always shoot raw when doing food. I know that we’ll only be shooting ten or fifteen frames so buffer and card space is never an issue. I can use the D300 at ISO 400 and get really nice results. I can’t really see a difference between the two when the image are printed so I always choose ISO 400 in order to use less power in each of the flash units. Since I’m rarely trying to shoot stopped down beyond f5.6, and usually more like f4, I can use my main light at 1/2th to 1/4th power, my background light at 1/4th to 1/8th and my backlight at 1/16th power. With settings like these I don’t even worry about external battery packs. Internal flash batteries will last for several shoots before needing to be changed out.
While I’m shooting raw I want to get as close as possible to an accurate representation as I can so I don’t have to chain myself to the computer and monkey around with an image that needs gobs of post production help. I know from experience that the color temperature of the strobes is around 5600K so I go ahead and set that manually. If I’m using one of the new Nikon cameras I try to always take advantage of the Active D-Light control to create greater dynamic range in the image. (Everything helps when you will eventually be converting your images to CMYK and seeing them printed on cheap, matte paper.…….)
I try to set a shutter speed that’s slow enough to allow some of the ambient light to seep into the shot but not at the expense of the color control provided by the speedlights. I never really mind when daylight shade is added to an image but I try to stay away from mixing strobe and tungsten light sources. Food should be rendered with as little aberrant color shift as possible in order for it to be visually engaging.
Many are the urban legends about the process of food styling for a shoot and no doubt many of them were true at one time or another. You hear stories about stylists or photographers painting roasted turkeys with shoe polish, concocting scoops of lard and powdered sugar mixed up to make ice cream and applications of motor oil to steaks to get just the right glisten. If the food is the hero it’s not only unethical but it is illegal to alter its general appearance if the shot is destined for advertising.
There is one truth to the rumors surrounding food photography. You generally do get to eat the props when you are finished! I must tell you that the hashimi at Uchi and the crab cakes at Hudson’s on the Bend were both absolutely first rate.
Food is not complicated and it’s photographic presentation has changed from the days of big film and big lights. The approach I’ve outlined here is best used for editorial clients where you are working without an assistant or stylist on the set. For advertising shoots with their layers of approval and their “stop and go” nature you should probably default to traditional lighting if for no other reason than to provide your art direct with the luxury of modeling lights and the perception of more professional rigor.
(photo: hashimi. Uchi.)
I hope that between the descriptions I’ve provided and your ability to “reverse engineer” lighting from the supplied images that you’ll be able to understand the way I used the lighting and cameras. I wanted to provide diagrams but scheduling reared its ugly head and I find myself writing this on the way to Pasadena California on a Southwest Airlines flight. No time for drawing! Until next month, Bon Appetit! and Light Well!
Kirk Tuck
Back then I knew the rudiments of lighting with strobes and I was okay at mixing daylight with strobe but I’d never shot a plate of french fries, much less a beautifully presented bowl of Tortilla Soup. A week before I left for the job I read every book I could find on the subject. There were very few and they were mostly written in the 1950’s and 1960’s with much emphasis on eight by ten inch view cameras and thousands of watts of tungsten light. What I gleaned in my research was how important it was to keep everything in sharp focus. As Grandpa Simpson (The Simpsons/Fox TV) would say, “That was all the fashion in my day.” The other two things I learned that have worked over the years are: 1. Food looks better if the main light is big and relatively soft. 2. Food looks better is the light comes from at least a 90 degree angle from the camera and preferably from slightly behind and above the food.
Hudson's on the Bend. Mixed Grill.
Over the next two decades, on the strength of that bestselling cookbook that eventually went into five editions, including a paperback, I have been called on repeatedly to shoot food. There have been some massive changes in the equipment we use now and even more profound changes in the style and look of food photography. The look has evolved from an ethic that kept everything on the table in sharp focus to a look were only a sliver of the featured dish need be in focus at all. Gone are any visible lighting artifacts such as sharply defined shadows or bright specular highlights. Now food is lit to emulate the effect of gentle, north light cascading through a large, conveniently placed window.
My four by five inch view camera is long gone. My camera of choice for food is my old Kodak SLR/n, one of the few 35mm style digital cameras that did not employ an anti-aliasing filter. No reason to worry about moire when shooting food.……. But lately, for expediency’s sake, I’ve been using a D300 and have general been pleased with the results. Plus it plays well with dedicated flash.
And speaking of flash, my collection of Profoto Strobes and their attendant accessories have been relegated to semi-retirement in my equipment closet. When I go on location to shoot food for editorial clients my lighting kit looks light this: One SB-800 flash, three SB-600 flashes, one SU-800 wireless controller, one forty-eight inch white, pop up diffuser. One piece of four by four foot white foamcore and plenty of batteries.
(photo: Four Seasons Dessert.)
The camera/lens combinations I’ve used for the images showcased here is mostly the Nikon D300 with a 70-300 VR lens, or the 16-85mm VR lens. I also pack the new Nikon 60 AFS macro lens for extreme close-ups or situations when I need very narrow depth of field with very high sharpness. That’s really it. All this stuff fits into on Think Tank Airport Security case. Of course there is a stand bag with a motley collection of stands, stand adapters, an arm to hold my diffuser and a small Velbon carbon fiber tripod.
So, on to the shooting. Editorial food shooters really do most of their work from 2pm till about 5:30pm. Most restaurant people aren’t up early enough to do anything coherent in the morning and evenings are when they make the bulk of their income. We tend to slide in after lunch and slide back out a bit before the first seating at 6pm.
The first thing on my agenda is to get with the chef and explain just what the magazine and I are interested in. I really try to resist heavy handed art direction because I think it is important that the food be a realistic representation of what our readers can expect when they go out for a meal. Once the chef and I are on the same wavelength we establish a time line for the shoot. The last thing I want is a manic chef bringing out a ton of food at once. A shoot can only go so fast and I never want to shoot a plate that’s not hot and fresh. Ten minutes out from the kitchen and the food just seems to die on the plate. Once we’ve established our timing I start my process by looking for a good background, because when I’m shooting tight on the food the only things that will show are the food, a small bit of the table top or shooting surface and whatever background I’ve chosen. (photo: Driskill Hotel. Dessert)
With the background selected I drag an appropriate shooting surface into position and stick a plate that will match the “hero” plate into place. I’ve done these kinds of tight, one plate, “hero” shots often enough that I’ve developed a routine for the lighting set up. I start by placing my large, white pop up diffuser on a arm, attach it to a short light stand and place it as close to the plate as possible 90 degrees to the side of the camera position. It’s important not to tilt the diffuser over the food because you will inevitably get broad, bright reflections on the plate. In most set ups the plane of my diffuser is inches away from the side of the plate.
Hudson's on the Bend. Crab Cake.
I place an SB-800 six feet away from the diffuser and use the zoom feature on the flash to tighten the beam so that it efficiently lights the surface of the diffuser with very little spill. That’s all there is to the main light. I may tweak it after I see how it works with the food but it’s usually just right. I hate using a second lighting instrument for fill so I rely on a white foamcore board or an additional pop up reflector place on the opposite side of the plate to bounce back some of the main light to open up the shadows. I’m a sucker for a nice dark, dramatic shadow so many times I’ll back the bounce fill away four or five feet from the set.
When the main light and the fill are set I turn my attention to the background light. This light fulfills three requirements: 1. Lighting the background adds depth to the shot. 2. Lighting the background provides valuable separation between the hero and the rest of the image. 3. Used correctly the light will fall off from side to side and from top to bottom and provide a nice vignette for the main subject. The background light is usually a Nikon SB-600 used on the little plastic foot that comes packed with the flash. If I need it a bit higher I’ll use a stand or just place the flash on a convenient chair. Then I go back to the camera position, pop a frame and evaluate the effect. The background light generally requires the most finesse and careful attention needs to be paid to the spread of the light so that the beam opens up the space around the hero but still drops off sufficiently around the edges of the frame. Once the background light is set you are 90% done with your lighting and any additions at this point are just accent lights.
With delicate entrees that have some height to them I always like to bring in a third light that acts as a backlight. This light should be much weaker than the other two and should just showcase the translucency in delicate greens and other food stuff. It can also provide a nice (hopefully subtle) edge lighting to the entrée to increase the snap or overall contrast of a shot. Beware of lens flare from this one. When I use a lens with a complex amount of air/glass interfaces like the 16-85 mm Nikon zoom I have to carefully shield the front element of the lens from any backlight or it will flare and reduce the overall contrast of my scene. A snoot made of black aluminum foil or a grid attachment on the front of the flash is an effective way to focus the backlight and limit spill light.
When the last light is in place you test until you are certain you’ve got what you want and then you have the chef bring out the first plate. If you have a good collaboration the chef will make you two plates. The first is the the “stand-in” and you’ll use it to fine tune your lighting and composition. You’ll also be able to evaluate the direction the plate should be turned in relation to the camera to best show off the food. Now is the time to tweak composition by raising or lowering the camera to best look into the bowl or plate. When everything is ready you’ll signal the chef to “plate” the hero and bring it on to the set. Have a clean towel and some toothpicks standing by. The towel is to wipe off any errant spills or fingerprints while the toothpick is there to gently pull at small parts of the presentation that might need to be moved a bit or “fluffed”.
Now shoot like crazy and bracket a bit while the food is hot, fresh and juicy. After you have the keeper you pre-visiualized try changing camera angles and camera heights. Also try to zoom in and get close on a detail that may act like “shorthand” to describe the entire dish without having to show the entire dish. If you and the chef have both done your jobs well the actual shooting should take five minutes or less.
Camera settings: We always shoot raw when doing food. I know that we’ll only be shooting ten or fifteen frames so buffer and card space is never an issue. I can use the D300 at ISO 400 and get really nice results. I can’t really see a difference between the two when the image are printed so I always choose ISO 400 in order to use less power in each of the flash units. Since I’m rarely trying to shoot stopped down beyond f5.6, and usually more like f4, I can use my main light at 1/2th to 1/4th power, my background light at 1/4th to 1/8th and my backlight at 1/16th power. With settings like these I don’t even worry about external battery packs. Internal flash batteries will last for several shoots before needing to be changed out.
While I’m shooting raw I want to get as close as possible to an accurate representation as I can so I don’t have to chain myself to the computer and monkey around with an image that needs gobs of post production help. I know from experience that the color temperature of the strobes is around 5600K so I go ahead and set that manually. If I’m using one of the new Nikon cameras I try to always take advantage of the Active D-Light control to create greater dynamic range in the image. (Everything helps when you will eventually be converting your images to CMYK and seeing them printed on cheap, matte paper.…….)
I try to set a shutter speed that’s slow enough to allow some of the ambient light to seep into the shot but not at the expense of the color control provided by the speedlights. I never really mind when daylight shade is added to an image but I try to stay away from mixing strobe and tungsten light sources. Food should be rendered with as little aberrant color shift as possible in order for it to be visually engaging.
Many are the urban legends about the process of food styling for a shoot and no doubt many of them were true at one time or another. You hear stories about stylists or photographers painting roasted turkeys with shoe polish, concocting scoops of lard and powdered sugar mixed up to make ice cream and applications of motor oil to steaks to get just the right glisten. If the food is the hero it’s not only unethical but it is illegal to alter its general appearance if the shot is destined for advertising.
Hudson's on the Bend. Berry Shortcake.
We use just a few things to help food along: 1. a clothes steamer place under a plate cover will revive a dying entrée for a few more moments (but will wreak havoc with raw vegetables and garnishes). 2. Olive oil or canola oil, delicately applied with a brush, can spark up meats and grilled vegetables. I think anything else should be done in the cooking itself. If a plate is not up to snuff figure out a kind way to redirect the chef and try again. Remember, if you are working for a magazine you are providing the restaurant with an incredibly valuable bit of free advertising and the cost of another steak or chicken leg is downright negligible in comparison. Most chefs will be happy to accommodate you when they understand the long term benefits of a good relationship with the media.
There is one truth to the rumors surrounding food photography. You generally do get to eat the props when you are finished! I must tell you that the hashimi at Uchi and the crab cakes at Hudson’s on the Bend were both absolutely first rate.
Food is not complicated and it’s photographic presentation has changed from the days of big film and big lights. The approach I’ve outlined here is best used for editorial clients where you are working without an assistant or stylist on the set. For advertising shoots with their layers of approval and their “stop and go” nature you should probably default to traditional lighting if for no other reason than to provide your art direct with the luxury of modeling lights and the perception of more professional rigor.
(photo: hashimi. Uchi.)
I hope that between the descriptions I’ve provided and your ability to “reverse engineer” lighting from the supplied images that you’ll be able to understand the way I used the lighting and cameras. I wanted to provide diagrams but scheduling reared its ugly head and I find myself writing this on the way to Pasadena California on a Southwest Airlines flight. No time for drawing! Until next month, Bon Appetit! and Light Well!
Kirk Tuck
7.22.2010
The one instance in which working for free is justified.
Lou. In the studio. Scanned from a print.
I wrote this because I read John Harrington's post on the perils of working for free and then I read Don Giannatti's rejoinder to John's post and then Don and I went back and forth a few times in semi-private and I thought, "Oh, what the hell? Let's start at the core and work out from there." What John is essentially saying is that any time you work for free, regardless of the reason, you are devaluing the whole industry of commercial photography (photography done to make a living....). What Don is saying, in a nutshell is that John has used too wide a brush to paint his arguments and that there are indeed times when working for free is okay.
When I pressed Don a bit (maybe I'm a lousy reader) we came to a clarification: It's okay to work for free if it's something you want to do, you initiate the photo because of your desire and you get tangible benefits as a result of your work. Maybe it's the access to shoot someone you admire. But the important thing in Don's point of view boils down to this: If they (potential client) call YOU then THEY pay. If you call them and want something from them then maybe YOU pay in some way but you win something too.
Well. I agree with both of them but then my head started hurting so I laid down on the couch with my dog and took a nap. When I woke up I decided NOT to think of all the shades of gray entailed in Don's approach or the high contrast blacks and whites of John's post. I decided to start out easy with one example and then, after I write this, head back to the couch and re-nap.
Here's the one time I'm sure it's okay to do work for free:
I was sitting at a coffee shop on the main drag in front of the University of Texas at Austin, wasting time, thinking about business and wondering how I could do more portraits that were in the style I wanted instead of having to do them in the style that clients of the moment demanded. I'm pretty sure I was drinking drip coffee because I've never really developed a taste for milky, espresso based coffee drinks. I know I was at a place called, Quackenbush's Intergalactic Coffee Bar and Bakery because that was one of the early and magnificent Austin independent coffee houses. They had lots of tables and their cakes and pastries were pretty good too. I did a lot of reading and thinking there.
Anyway, just as I was bemoaning my own lack of initiative and spunk, and wishing I could shoot more fun stuff and giving myself the excuse that I just didn't have access to the right people, I looked up and say the most beautiful young woman I had ever seen. Amazingly beautiful. Not in a "hot goddess/garage glamor" sort of way but a refined, sophisticated, perfect Audrey Hepburn sort of way. I remember her light gray corduroy pants, her rough, deep blue sweater with a white shirt collar peeking over the top. And a look for brilliance in her eyes.
At the time, she was 18 and I was about 36. For a moment I processed all the reasons why a beautiful young girl would not possibly want to entertain an invitation for photography from a stranger twice her age. Then, because I sensed this was an turning point of some kind for me as an artist, I wrestled up the courage to walk up to her, hand her my business card and roughly outline what I wanted. Which was the chance to make a portrait of her. Nothing else.
Now, this was before the age of the web, and so there were no ready references I could send her to which would vouch for my skills and intentions. The best I could do was to provide a reference from a female art director at a well respected magazine. I'd done my best. I could only wait.
In a few days I got a phone call from Lou. She agreed to come to my studio and pose for an image. A portrait. Her payment would be whatever prints she would like from the shoot. From the first moment every frame was something wonderful to me. We worked together on and off for the entire four years she was going to school in Austin. I used her commercially for a magazine cover, an industrial video, and a bunch of print projects and all these were paid gigs for both of us but all the images that we did for my portfolio were done for fun and art.
If the assignment was commercial I paid her for her time and usage. If it was for me I paid her in prints. When my kid was born she was our first baby sitter. If everyone were as beautiful, kind, smart and funny I'd be working for free for an awfully long time. The benefits to me? She made me look better than I was as an artist. The images we made together opened doors for me. The friendship was wonderful. The memory of making the images is a treasure. Who would have paid me for all this?
If you feel passionate about photographing someone or something you find a way to do it. Not everything can or needs to be "monetized".
The rest of the hypothetical scenarios are just that. Life is short. You make your own roadmaps. You decide.
You might want to do some reading about the business..............
You might want to do some reading about the business..............
7.21.2010
Style is substance and vice versa.
Dr. John Clarke, Annie Laurie Howard Regents Professor in Fine Arts, Ph.D. Former Chairmen of the UT Austin College of Art History. Photographed for the University of Texas at Austin. Two lights. One point of view.
On a confluent vein, I took my son along on a photo assignment this afternoon and on the way home we were discussing what we'd seen and done. I was tasked with taking a portrait of a doctor on his ranch here in central Texas and then interviewing him in order to write the ad copy. I asked the doctor, who is a second generation surgeon, why he followed his father into the practice of medicine. He responded that he had always wanted to be just like his father. I know his father and it's a wonderful goal.
On the way home I asked Ben what he thought of the interview. He said that it was interesting but that he hoped I wasn't expecting him to follow my example and become a photographer. I assured him (with a great sense of relief on my part) that his being a photographer was not something I was pushing for. As the conversation continued Ben asked me why I became a photographer.
I expected him to think that I loved making and sharing photographs. Or that I loved problem solving or playing with fine pieces of equipment. But the truth is that I'm drawn to the experiences and privileged points of view that life gives image makers in its pageant procession. The camera is a passport into a wildly rich assortment of experiential episodes. It gives me the license to be present and aware in a way that other professions don't.
What a glorious and charming way for an avowed fiction writer to assemble the raw materials for books and stories. I realized this when I realized that I didn't really care if the images came out perfectly as long as the clients liked them and kept inviting me back. And then I realized that when I stopped caring about perfection the images got better and better. And once I gave up thinking about anything but the subject, and my reactions to the subject, my pictures became an extension of my style and became my art.
Photography is the messy intersection of art and physics. For it to become art it must be informed by a creator's unique point of view--about the subject. That's the magic stuff. Something to think about.
Where does style come from? How do I get some?
Shot in 1993 with a Canon EOS-1 and the first version of the
85mm 1.1.2 L lens. Paris, France. Agfapan 400.
There's two ways to look at style. One is tied to the idea of fashion and what is fashionable. This idea rewards constant changes of approach in order to incorporate the lighting of the day, the subject matter of the moment and the presentation of the minute. Just last year many photographers rushed to make images that made liberal use of the "clarity" slider in PhotoShop, along with multiple backlights and a healthy dose of dynamic range manipulation via the shadow and highlight sliders that showed up, en masse, in most image processing programs.
The other way to look at style is to perceive it as the leitmotif of the long term arc of an artist. How do they routinely like to approach and display subjects. And what are the pervasive consistencies over time. We like artists who can innovate while staying true to their basic nature. That's what makes them powerful.
In time, given the number of monkeys typing and the vast spending power of the marketplace, people in the first camp will, within weeks of the birth of a new style, be able to buy a canned filter set that will allow them to make work that superficially looks like the work of the latest "wunderkind". (When did we go German?????). Take a shot, dump it in PS, hit the art filter button and sit back while the little magic squirrels on the wheels take control and make your work look like everyone else's. Indeed, we can see this all over the share sites right now. And there's a huge number of self-promotion videos in which today's acknowledged instant photo celebrities show you have to look like them...
It's not so easy in the second camp. It requires shooting and shooting and looking and shooting. And watching the natural evolution of a style that is demonstrably both yours and long term at the same time. And it may be nothing like what you expected when you started. There is value to playing scales and learning method but it's all just filling time if all you ever do is sit around playing the opening measures of "Stairway to Heaven" for the rest of your life.
Nabokov became rich and well known by writing like Nabokov. None of the rest of a generation of Nabokov imitators made it out of the gates. The style that counts is the style that comes over years and decades, not the one you can get out of can.
I'm still working on mine. But it's one of those miserable Zen things. If you focus on style it eludes you. It only works when you forget to work on style and just respond to the things you attract to the front of your camera......
A rare portrait of me by Ellis Vener, Monday.
I've known photographer and writer, Ellis Vener, for......decades. We were in school at the same time at UT and we intersected at the Ark Cooperative Darkroom pretty regularly. Ellis moved to Atlanta from Houston a while ago and he's doing well with both his commercial photography business (http://www.ellisvener.com) and as a writer and equipment reviewer for Professional Photographer Magazine.
He's in Austin this week and dropped by my studio to pick up a tripod. He does these incredibly complex image assemblages (far beyond a typical stitched panorama....) and he needed some stout sticks. I lent him the big, black Berlebach tripod
. Like a consummate pro, he brought his own tripod head.....As is our habit, we sat around the studio and swapped stories about outrageous bids, even more outrageous clients and equipment nerd stuff. When the conversation slowed down Ellis announced that he was sporting some new technology and wanted to try it out on me. Here's the technospeek about the technique used to do the portrait, above: http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/919822
The new TTL Pocket Wizards
have the capability of giving your Canon camera's FP flash sync at much higher shutter speeds than before. Interestingly enough, it's a technique that rewards flashes with fairly long burn times. We hauled out the Profoto 600b
with a head and a small Elinchrom shoot thru, umbrella modifier and headed toward the stone wall the runs along the street at the front of the property. Goal: Get portrait with cool, out of focus sky.After some playing around Ellis added a backlight from a Canon 580 EX2
, also equipped with one of the Pocket Wizard TTL transceivers. We found that solid, Texas live oaks can block radio signals but we eventually get everything worked out.Ellis was shooting with a Canon 1D mk4
(a camera I am very interested in) and the new 70-200mm f2.8 IS lens. Fun to watch another photographer at work from the point of view of the subject. However, as it was close to 100(f) in the shade we quickly headed back into the cool, dark cave that is the studio.See the shirt? It's one of the Ex Officio technical shirts
doing its job and keeping me from sweating. Now if I could only figure out why Ellis PhotoShopped my hair gray........ (humor intended. Signal provided for the painfully serious....).This is a great way to try out product. I don't have to invest anything till I see how it works, what the tradeoffs are and how I might be able to use it. Another fun topic of conversation was the Paul Buff, Einstein monolights. Ellis showed me some great footage he'd done using the 10 fps of his Canon 1dmk4 along with the fast recycle of the Einstein. Cobbled together from hundreds of jpegs into a Quicktime movie-----it was an eye opener and presages yet another paradigm shift.
Say what you will about Paul Buff but he is single-handedly keeping an entire industry on its toes.......
On the calendar today, Young Ben will be pressed into service as an assistant for another Dr. shoot out on a ranch. I have high hopes for something as fun as the Dr. feeding the baby deer shot I showed a week or so ago. We'll see how the boy does as a videographer and general assist.
7.20.2010
Street shooting in San Antonio.
Renae on Commerce St. in San Antonio with a wedding dress and tanned shoulders.
I blame Robert Frank and Richard Avedon equally for my love of street photography. While the Robert Frank reference is obvious to anyone who's looked through a copy of "The Americans"
I'm sure people unfamiliar with the breadth and depth of Avedon's career are probably scratching their heads. Rush out to a well stocked book store and browse through a copy of Richard Avedon, " An Autobiography"
and you'll be surprised to find a bunch of wonderful street photos from New York, Paris and Rome. Were they all staged? Probably, but I don't find them any less powerful. Part of the power in the work of both artists no doubt comes from their conversant ease with graphic black and white. They were working directly in the process rather than trying to divine how to shoot in RGB and then make the right gyrations to unlock their vision, after the fact.
I'm sure people unfamiliar with the breadth and depth of Avedon's career are probably scratching their heads. Rush out to a well stocked book store and browse through a copy of Richard Avedon, " An Autobiography" and you'll be surprised to find a bunch of wonderful street photos from New York, Paris and Rome. Were they all staged? Probably, but I don't find them any less powerful. Part of the power in the work of both artists no doubt comes from their conversant ease with graphic black and white. They were working directly in the process rather than trying to divine how to shoot in RGB and then make the right gyrations to unlock their vision, after the fact. Both Avedon and Frank were masters of seeing and capturing gesture. And gesture is one of the unsung foundations of a great portrait.
So, after sitting around brainwashing myself with my book collection I called my friend and transcendent muse, Renae and suggested a street shooting foray in one of our favorite (financially) accessible cities, San Antonio. She mentioned that she had a wedding dress we could use as a prop and we were off.
As you've probably come to expect by now, we didn't do anything by the numbers. Instead of a box full of gear I dragged out a Hasselblad 2003 FCW and an 80mm lens. Instead of our typical Provia
color transparency film or our old standby, Tri-X
, I threw ten rolls of Agfa Scala film in the bag. Sink or swim. All my stories seem to have the line....."It was a hot, Texas day...." and this one is no different. By the time we banged thru the ten rolls we were shot and heading toward the bar at the Havanna Hotel.
color transparency film or our old standby, Tri-X, I threw ten rolls of Agfa Scala film in the bag. Sink or swim. All my stories seem to have the line....."It was a hot, Texas day...." and this one is no different. By the time we banged thru the ten rolls we were shot and heading toward the bar at the Havanna Hotel.For people who never had the privilege and pleasure of shooting film I guess I should explain Agfa Scala. It was a black and white transparency film. No chance at redemption if you weren't able to hit the exposure. And it was a latitude cheapskate. Half a stop over and you were in white territory. One stop under and you lost your lower mid-tones in a sea of black. Once you shot it you had to send it off in pre-paid mailers so you didn't know if you were a chump or a hero for about ten days. I'm always optimistic on the front end and pessimistic on the back end. Love it while I'm shooting and critical when I see the mess I've made.
But the whole exercise was more for fun than anything else. I figure if photography is so fun that it's the world's biggest hobby I should consider my life one perpetual "Magic Kingdom" of fun. So we shot and settled for what we got. Even the stuff that was blurred by subject motion or photographer inattention. Like the one below....
note: After I started writing this I went into the house from the studio (fourteen steps....) and grabbed the Avedon book off the shelf to make sure I had the title right. I plugged it in and checked out the Amazon.com link for the book. OMG!!! The first (and only?) edition of this book is going for a lusty $500+ dollars. Very good condition used copies are around $350. Amazing.
But I guess I shouldn't be too surprised as the first edition of "The Americans", inscribed by Robert Frank, is going in the neighborhood of $16,000.
I better stock up on some more first edition, Minimalist Lighting (location)
and Minimalist Lighting (studio)
books before they run out. I'd hate to be an author who couldn't afford his own first and second books..........I have one Summer reading suggestion to all you readers who like historical fiction. If you haven't read Stephen Pressfield's, "The Gates of Fire
" you should. It's a brilliant version of the Greek battle at Thermopylae against the Persians. I've re-read it three or four times and I'm always sucked into it. You've probably read my recommendation of his smaller but no less brilliant non-fiction book, "The War of Art"
which I believe should be on every artist's night stand or bookshelf. It'll save your artistic life......Hope you're having fun. People will want to know what you did over the Summer......
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)