Whether or not a portrait is good is a matter of your intention going in...

It's the weekend and it's quickly racing to a close. I'm trying to make lists of things I need to do in the upcoming week but I keep getting stuck on the line on the list where I've written:

"Make an interesting portrait this week."

It's a little unsettling that I feel the need to write that down but at the same time we humans tend to get wrapped up in the minute by minute drama we sometimes construct for our lives and forget the bigger things that make it all worthwhile. One of the requirements, in order to make each week a good week, is to at least try and make a good portrait. Not technically good; I've long since been disinterested in that, but whimsically good. Or dramatically good. Or connection-rich good.

When I make a portrait I like there are several responses that I usually feel. One response is to find the image funny and that, in itself, is endearing in a photograph. If it's just the right kind of portrait I find myself feeling infatuated with the subject. Like having a crush.

Some images create a nostalgia for a time or place that was never really mine. And some portraits lie to me and make me think that I have some insight or awareness about the person I've made the portrait of when really, it's just me creating that response from the visual stimulation I've created.

I know a portrait works when I don't mind having it on the wall in front of me for years and years at a time. But, of course, I can never know that now. I can only know that in a future now.

A portrait is an emotional trophy when the subject says, "You capture exactly how I feel."

And you know it's a great portrait when you make extra prints because you could never bear to lose the image and you want to be certain that you have replacements, just in case.

I don't think "making an interesting portrait" ever starts with the thought: "I would like to explore this kind of lighting or that kind of lighting technique this week and I'll need a subject."

And I don't think "making an interesting portrait" ever starts with the desire to see how sharp my new lens is, or how superior my new camera might be in relation to all the many cameras that came before.

If you set out to solve a technical problem there's a small chance that the part of your brain that makes emotionally connected images will grab your bossy technical brain from behind and tie it up and make you do art before that smug and analytical tech brain busts free and gets everything back "on the right track."

I use the tools of my craft to show how beautiful the person in front of my camera is. I try not to use the beauty of the person in front of my camera to show how cool my expensive toys are...

"Make an interesting portrait this week." Is on my to-do list every week. I don't always get to it. I don't always have what it takes. But I leave it on my list to remind me that it's worth trying.

Unconventional approaches can produce a different result.

Portrait of a person who quit smoking. For Prevention Magazine.

I recently came across a thread in a forum that disturbed me. I think I know why. The originator of the thread was asking the community of photographers at large about using continuous light to make photographs, in the studio. All the "experts" quickly chimed in to "educate" this poor bastard and let him know that flash is the best, only approved, only correct and standard way of taking any photograph that requires any lighting. The implication was that the use of any other type of light was symptomatic of arch stupidity. The main premise of the commenters was that any movement shown as blur in the photograph is bad and also that photographers might require dozens and dozens of hot lights in order to "match" the light "power" one can easily get from a single, plastic, electronic flash.

I was disturbed to find that people are so incurious and so resistant to the application of any technique that is not unanimously embraced by the collective. I was disturbed to think that there is now only one (approved) way to skin an image. And I was disturbed by the hubris of the responders. It reminded me how dangerous it is to have only enough information to have an opinion.

Over the course of my career I've always owned lots of flash equipment and I've used it on thousands and thousands of jobs. But there is a time and place for experimentation, curiosity and expressing a different vision. One of those places is in the arts. And photography sometimes falls into the category of "art" (with a little "a").

The image above was made for Prevention Magazine. They called. They liked the black and white style I'd been doing for a number of years and they wanted me to do that style for an article they were writing about people who'd changed their lives.

I started with this style of lighting after studying some really cool images from the 1940's, taken by a photographer in a small Texas town. All of his images were done with "hot lights" and all of them had wonderful areas of shadow and light, as well as a sharper look to the lighting than what was in vogue in the 1990's.

I packed for the shoot by taking a bunch of Lowell Pro Lights (a 250 watt focusable flood light with barn doors) and several low wattage optical spotlights that use fresnel lenses to collimate the light. Out of a reflexive fear I also packed the usual steamer trunk full of Norman studio electronic flash gear. The Normans stayed in the car.

I used one light from above, diffused by a very thin diffusion material to create a very directional downlight for my subject's face. I use a small, Lowell from above and behind the subject as a kicker and hair light. And I used a small 250 watt flood to illuminate the back wall (lighting in layers...).

The light looked so different to me from the softbox driven, soft transition lighting we all used back then. The fact that it was lower powered than conventional strobe was something that I really liked because it gave me both a very shallow depth of field but also an excuse to keep telling my subject to freeze.  It's a quality of light that also looks sharper, overall, than more diffused light.

The magazine was very pleased with the image and ran it in a full page, uncropped, next to the article. I was pleased because the image didn't look like any of the other images in the magazine. I stayed with this style for quite a while. It's a little harder to set up and you have to keep your subjects in the sweet spots of the light but it's nice to have extra and different tools in the box.

I am currently evolving that style now. It's fun and challenging to use harder, hotter lights. It takes more time and effort. But the difference is worth it when you pull it off.

Contrary to the opinions of the "Photo Borg" we needn't all be assimilated into the Borg. There are plenty of really good lighters who use nothing but continuous lights. They are called directors of photography, or DP's. They work in the movie industry and they create stunning visual products that create billions and billions of dollars of value. There are also plenty of still photographers who also understand that there are advantages to using hot lights, florescent lights, HMI's, and even LEDs to create effects and to give heightened control to lighting. As well as helping visual creators find their own brand, their own style.

It's okay to be different. It's okay to shoot differently. In fact, for people at the higher end of the craft, it's mandatory. Being able to mimic the majority of work out there is nothing of which to be proud.

What's For Dessert?

Maybe a chocolate mousse with a couple chocolate truffles.

This is a small part of a bigger shot. The bigger shot was just fine but I liked this section more than I liked the whole thing so I cropped. I made this photograph for Garrido's Restaurant about a month ago. It was lit with LED lights and a Sony a99 camera equipped with a 70-200mm f2.8 Sony lens. I wish I had the time that day to make a comparison shot with the Sony Nex 7 and the same lens, equalizing the angle of view to compensate for the difference in sensor size.

Of course, whenever I order dessert I'm generally pretty happy with what I get but I always wonder if the other desserts that I passed up in making my choice might have been even better. 

I wonder what the analogy to chocolate is in still photography...

Old School Instagram. We used to call them Polaroids.

This grizzled, old relic (the print, not the subject...) is the precursor to the current trend of presenting distressed photographs. The only difference is that we didn't need to do anything to distress a typical Polaroid SX-70 print; they came mostly pre-distressed. Nevertheless we did spend some amount of time walking around with the bulky SX-70 cameras and snapping away at a couple bucks a frame.

When I got back from Boston last week I finally came to grips with the reality that my studio/office was an unorganized mess. I've been cleaning, sorting and throwing stuff out. My intentions were good and my energy adequate until I found a small box filled with old Polaroid images. I was organized enough to get a bunch of instant film prints into a box many years ago, just not organized enough to put a label on the box or to put it someplace logical.

The man in the image is my friend, Wyatt McSpadden. Originally from Amarillo, Texas, I rank him, along with our mutual friend,  designer/writer  Mike Hicks, as two of the funniest people I've ever encountered.

I have no idea why I was photographing Wyatt on the loading dock outside our studios in east Austin nearly twenty years ago. But I'm glad I did. It preserved the time for me and this small print brought back the whole feel of the time.

Can I suggest that you print out and save some of the digital images you currently take of family and friends? You may not always keep track of the digital work that we make these days but the sheer physical-ness of a printed object makes it a more valuable artifact. One that's easier to access and harder to throw away.

Amazing to me what power there is locked in a single image.

Bricks and Mortar Camera Stores Dying? I Don't Think So... Not in Austin.

http://blog.atmtxphoto.com/2013/03/09/precision-camera-transforms/

People want to shop local. But they want merchants to keep up with the times. ATMTX Blog shows what a camera store can be. Go read about it.

Almost everything here came from Precision Camera. The only exceptions are the two Pen lenses and the Fotodiox lens adapter...


disclosure: I do not work for Precision Camera and have received no product, money or promise of either in exchange for this blog post. 

I hurt my brain writing yesterday's blog so I thought I'd give my brain a day off.

...And share some of my favorite, old, previously published blog links. These are blogs about gear or about the idea of gear that are among my favorites. If you've been here for the long haul you've probably already read them. Some are dated. Some are prophetic and some less so. Just wanted to share while letting my cerebral cortex spin in neutral....

Some of my favorite "GEAR" posts…

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/01/thinking-about-gear-made-me-think-about.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-shoot-far-more-interesting.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-old-camera-can-beat-your-new-camera.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/12/small-sensor-systems-practical.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/12/does-application-of-technique-de-facto.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/12/dual-edge-sword-of-control.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/11/late-afternoon-and-into-evening-with.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/11/im-always-amazed-at-how-entrenched.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/11/speaking-of-disruptive-technologies-and.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/10/branding-photography-based-on-logo-love.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/09/old-cameras-new-cameras-old-pictures.html

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/09/professional-photographers-always.html