More Portraits in the Style of...
NOTE: This is a blog post originally published on October 10, 2015. I am porting some of the posts from my old blog over to this new one. Please see this post for the full story.
I was very excited when Don Giannatti decided to do another round of the Lighting Essentials 8-week portrait workshop. The first one was so exciting and fun, now we had another 8 masters of portraiture to draw inspiration from.
The format was the same as the previous workshop. Don picks 8 portrait photographers with different styles for us to review. We draw inspiration from the work and make our own images. Whether you like their work or not, you can't help but be inspired.
So here they are:
1. David Bailey
Long-time Vogue photographer David Bailey has a personality that is as big as his talent. His fashion work back in the '60s is just phenomenal and helped shape the future of fashion photography. I was inspired by his high contrast and high key images.
2. Greg Heisler
Greg is one of my favorite photographers. He is a true genius who has found the optimum mix of creativity and technical prowess. He has an incredibly creative vision and a very methodical way to go about making that vision come to life. I was fortunate enough to have met him and participated in one of his workshops at Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai back in 2014. I was inspired by his work with colored gels for this image.
3. Mary Ellen Mark
Mary Ellen Mark was an exceptional story teller. She was a portrait photographer but with a very photojournalistic feel to her work. I had a hard time wrapping my head around this concept since it's very different from what I normally shoot. I decided to give myself an assignment; a story to tell. I called this little project "Screen Time" and it documents how much time my kids spend in front of a computer / phone / tablet screen.
4. Francesco Scavullo
Scavullo is the king of glamour. A similar style to Bailey but more sensual and glamorous. As luck would have it, just as this assignment came up I received a call from my friend Lauren Baranowski, who had just won the title of Miss Florida Nationwide, asking if I could do her official portrait for the Miss Nationwide pageant. It was the perfect opportunity to shoot some Scavullo glam!
5. Albert Watson
Watson is another genius among us. Not only is he a brilliant portraitist but he masters pretty much all the other genres of photography as well. I was particularly fond of a portrait in black and white where the model (Christy Turlington I think) had smoke coming out of her mouth. I went for a slightly different concept.
6. Mark Seliger
Seliger is an absolutely outstanding photographer. He photographs mostly celebrities so you have probably seen his work. He made quite a splash with the photos he took after the 2015 Oscars at the Vanity Fair party. I actually used those shots as inspiration for these.
7. Frank Ockenfels
Ockenfels is also an amazing celebrity portrait photographer. He shoots mostly movie, TV and sports celebrities. What I took away from his work is the intensity of the expression on his subject's faces; particularly a portrait of Lance Armstrong. Luck was again on my side when a friend, who is a yoga and Zumba instructor, came into town and agreed to pose for my Ockenfels inspired shot.
8. Greg Gorman
Gorman is my kind of photographer. He is an absolute master of the mysterious high contrast black & White. He shoots actors, musicians and other celebrities. His work includes a lot of nudes so be careful of your surroundings when checking out his portfolio. My image was inspired by his mysterious and high contrast work.
This was another fun workshop which helps you to open your mind and eyes to new possibilities in your photography. Stay tuned for round three which is going on as I write this.
Portraits in the Style of...
NOTE: This is a blog post originally published on March 29, 2015. I am porting some of the posts from my old blog over to this new one. Please see this post for the full story.
Photographers must stay on top of their game. To do that you must challenge yourself. You must step out of your comfort zone. Shoot something different or in a different way. Workshops are a good way to do that, and one of the best workshop instructors out there is Don Giannatti. When I heard that Don was putting together a new online workshop concept for portraits, I jumped at the opportunity and signed up.
The 8 Week Portrait Class with Don Giannatti is a fantastic way to work out those creative muscles while forcing you to really think in depth about your photography. Here is how it works:
Don will pick 8 photographers who are recognized as masters of portraiture. Then, over 8 weeks we look very closely at the work of each photographer in turn and make one or two portraits of our own inspired by the work of that photographer. The goal is not to copy, but take apart the elements of the photographer's style, find something you like and use it to make something new. It's actually quite difficult, and that is what makes this great!
Victor Skrebneski
Skrebneski's (some images in gallery NSFW) work is dominated by very contrasty black & white images and his lighting is mostly a single source at very high angle creating dark prominent shadows in the eyes, nose, and under the chin. He is also a big fan of blur, either by intentionally making the image out of focus or using motion blur.
My first image borrows the lighting from Skrebneski.
for my second image, I played with the idea of motion blur. The image below was not made in Photoshop, but in-camera by using a long exposure and 3 separate flash fires. There is also no smoke, the effect is a result of the particular light fixture providing the ambient exposure.
Don wrote a blog post on Lighting Essentials about this assignment which includes all the images from all the participants.
Yousef Karsh
Karsh's work incorporates more elaborate lighting setups. He often uses rim lights to separate his subjects from the background and incorporates backgrounds to reveal a little more information about his subject. My two images tried to incorporate that aspect of his work.
Don wrote a blog post about the Karsh assignment on Lighting Essentials which includes a gallery of all the images from all the participants.
Sarah Moon
Sarah Moon (some images in gallery NSFW) is by far the most unusual photographer of the 8 we studied. Her photographs often looked more like paintings than photographs. A lot of her work is blurry which does not appeal to me much but I did like her use of primary colors and her use of shadow shapes in some of her work.
The image below was done mostly in-camera. I shot through a screen door to get this glowing/painting look and used primary colors to really give it some punch.
This second image I used the shadows from the railing of the stairs to project the shadows of the bars on to my subject and give it this trapped feel. I added the blue and the concerned little sister watching in the mirror to add to the distress.
Don wrote a blog post on Lighting Essentials about the Sarah Moon assignment which includes a gallery of all the images from all the participants.
Peter Lindbergh
Peter Lindbergh does some fantastic work (some images in gallery NSFW). A great black & white shooter he often uses natural light and a black tent to really isolate his subjects. I did not use natural light, but I did use a large light source to simulate it.
Don wrote a blog post about this assignment on Lighting Essentials which includes a gallery of all the images from the participants.
Herb Ritts
Herb Ritts (some images in gallery NSFW) is another amazing black & white shooter. Simple backgrounds and graphic compositions are his trademark. His portraits are very creative and belong equally on the pages of a fashion magazine and the walls of an art gallery.
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Don wrote a blog post on Lighting Essentials about this assignment which includes a gallery of all the images from the class participants.
Jeanloup Sieff
Jeanloup Sieff (some images in gallery NSFW) is a master of the wide-angle lens. His shots use the distortion caused by the lens to add to the backgrounds in his images. The wide-angle lens is not usually the first choice for portraits but Jeanloup makes it work so well. Many of his images also incorporate shadows thrown into the background to add interest.
My first image uses one light through an etched glass door to create interesting patterns on my subject.
My second image plays with the distortion effects of the wide-angle lens.
Dan Winters
Dan Winters has a very recognizable style. His images are very tough to reproduce or emulate because his lighting is very precise. He often uses flags and very focused light sources to make the shadows and the light dance across his frame. Another trademark is a ring light for a fill.
This was by far the most difficult shoot to do. I really liked the way he casts shadows across the faces of his subjects and tried to reproduce something like it. It was a lot of trial & error. Lights and flags were moved fractions of inch trying to get the shadows placed in just the right spot.
After a lot of sweat, these were the outcomes.
Don wrote a blog post on Lighting Essentials with a gallery of photos from all the participants in the class.
William Coupon
The things that immediately jump out from looking at William Coupon's work (some images in gallery NSFW) are vey warm lighting and textured backgrounds. His work is deliberate and often uses just one light source to light both subject and background.
I was under a time crunch and did not have as much time as I would have liked to complete this assignment. I used a single light source on the background and let the edges of the light fall on my subject. I added an orange gel to the flash for added warmth. The wall in the background was textured, so I used a small lens aperture to throw it out of focus. I was only able to make one image for this assignment.
With the final assignment, the class was over and the experience gained was truly invaluable. All of us involved have gained several new tools to add to our portrait arsenal. We have also gained valuable insight into what makes some of the best portrait photographers tick and honed our analytical skills of looking at photographs and picking the elements that appeal to us.
The class was so well received, Don is running new sessions and created a follow-up class Portrait 102 for those who have completed the 8 week portrait class. If you are a photographer looking to sharpen your portrait skills, I highly recommend these classes. They are not for the beginner though, as you will not get any basic lighting or proper exposure guidance. These courses are intended for those who are already passed that stage.
Here are a couple of extra images that were not submitted as assignments but are worth sharing:
This was my Sarah Moon lighting setup through the screen door.
Another worthy shot from the Jeanloup assignment
GPP Dubai - Day 3
Day 3 of Gulf Photo Plus for me was the first day of the Gregory Heisler workshop. If you don't know who Greg Heisler is, shame on you! Go look him up. I'll make it easy for you. Here is the link. Now getting back to the story. We met in a classroom for a few hours where Greg talked about how he perceives light and uses it to get at the image he wants to make. It was a pretty brief walkthrough in the principles of lighting, but I think most people in the workshop were pretty familiar with the concepts.
Since the workshop participants don't do any shooting, I kind of grabbed what I could get. Here are some of the images I made on Day 3.
GPP Dubai - Day 2
Gulf Photo Plus, Dubai - Day 1
NOTE: This is a blog post originally published on March 3, 2014. I am porting some of the posts from my old blog over to this new one. Please see this post for the full story.
Every year in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) there is this great photography conference called Gulf Photo Plus, or GPP for short. It's a one-week collection of photography workshops taught by some of the greatest instructors in the business. The workshops tend to be intimate due to their low student/teacher ratio and there are plenty of opportunities to socialize with these masters beyond the actual workshops. In fact, this is really the biggest appeal of GPP, the access and opportunity to interact with these talented instructors.
So after several years of following all the action through social media and blogs, I have finally made it to Dubai to check it out for myself. Living in the USA, traveling to Dubai is quite the journey but it's not as bad as you might initially think. People in the US don't really think much about driving 13 - 20 hours to go visit some far off state. In fact, it's quite common. So why is a 13-hour flight such a big deal? Cost? It is expensive, but not so expensive that you can't plan in advance and save up a little more than you would for a typical vacation. If photography is your business, it's not any more of an investment than a good quality course or seminar in any profession.
It was exactly this logic that finally got me to Dubai. I think the biggest obstacle for people doing something like this is neither time nor money but simply fear from never having done it before. Once you get over that, you're on your way.
So here I am, tired and jet-lagged for sure, but also extremely excited about what's to come. On the flight over here, I found myself on the same flight as Joe McNally, Lindsay Adler, and RC from Kelby Media. Just the opportunity to mingle with these people while in the long and slow-moving passport control line in the Dubai airport has made the trip worth every penny for me.
Stay tuned for more from Dubai.