The Self-Portrait (or How to Deal With a Problem Subject)

I was speaking with the amazing Anya Downing of Engage Marketing Design (http://engagemarketingdesign.com/) last week and we were looking over my website. Among other things, she wondered about my portrait on my Info page, commenting that it was not my usual style. Well, I told her, my son took it. Considering the subject with whom he had to work, it's a great photo, as are others from the shoot. But she was right, the photo is his style, and although he is not (yet) a studio shooter, he creates exceptional photos in his own style.

I began thinking about whether I wanted to address this self-portrait issue. I do tend to internalize most anything that is said to me and about me from someone whose opinion I value, so off I went.

Self-portraits, as most anyone will tell you, can be difficult. I find my self-portrait subject to be generally uncooperative, and I have some difficulty having him not "pose". I've tried different things...

Western Avenue Studios, Lowell, Massachusetts - 2007

Westford, Massachusetts - 2007

After using this shot (above) for a while, I did a semi-environmental portrait, in my living room (right). But after a while, my son informed me that this was not up to my usual standards. I am paraphrasing ;-)

Then there was the shot below that I created for a group art show in Lowell. I think I would call this a self-portraits [sic].

Western Avenue Studios, Lowell, Massachusetts - 2009

Or there is always the action shot...

Western Avenue Studios, Lowell, Massachusetts - 2010

So yesterday, I needed to do a shot of my studio for another purpose, and I decided to put myself into the scene...

Western Avenue Studios, Lowell, Massachusetts - 2010
Whatever.

Ok. So what would I do for some other middle-aged guy who wears jeans and has no delusions about looking anything like George Clooney... Simple. I'd go with dramatic lighting, black background, no props, no chair, little to no retouch.

Networking and the Photographer

For a while now I have been working on a self-assigned project to photograph people in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. One of several goals of the project is to show the work in an exhibit that I will be doing with painter and pastel artist Bill Tyers. That goal, along with the always-present desire and requirement  to expand my portfolio, has allowed me to meet and be introduced to many people whom I may not have otherwise met. For this I have utilized several of my networks. A few of my subjects were either part of, or were introduced to me by members of some of the business networking groups that I belong to in Lowell, Chelmsford and Westford, Massachusetts. Other meetings came about as a result of simply asking clients and Twitter contacts if they would pose, and if they could think of other people who might make interesting subjects and might pose as well.

One such person, referred to me in the latter category, was Fru Nkimbeng, originally of Cameroon, and now President of the African Cultural Association of Lowell. The association puts on the Lowell African Festival along the river each year, and which took place just last weekend. Fru works in Information Technology, so between our common experiences in that and our short conversation in French upon first meeting, I think the trepidations that Fru had in my photographing him were lessened. But being very active in the local African community, we both thought that he should be shown in traditional dress of Cameroon. For a photographer, the oranges, reds and blues in his garments were a gift.


If you are a photographer, and you like to photograph people, but don't know whom to ask, my advice is to just start somewhere. Ask that first person if they will pose and then ask if they might know other interesting people who would also be interested in posing. Keep doing that and after a while you will have a very long list. Networks work for more than just getting referrals for business in the traditional way.

An Artistic Voice

Color, light, shadow and texture. The elusive harmony of form and composition. A look, a laugh, or a moment that draws you in. These are the things that compel me. This is why I create images.

I wrote this recently in an attempt to describe how I feel about what I do. What made me think of this was that I had recently photographed a young actor and college student and was trying to come up with a reason to show them off. She and I will be doing some conventional  actor headshots for her portfolio, but I also asked her to be a subject for my ongoing Merrimack Valley People portrait project, and those are the shots shown here. In mulling  over today's blog I encountered another blog, entitled "Your Artistic Voice - Do You Have One?", which you can read here.

I hope I have a vision and a distinctive style, or as the blog describes, "that work [that] couldn’t possibly have been done by anyone else". I also hope that my short statement at the opening of this post accurately describes it. The other article also says that a style comes from "life experience and mastery of material". In my life, both of these things are works-in-progress. I think if one ever considers either of those things complete, the game is over. If there's no learning going on, things get old pretty quickly, both in terms of the work product and the activity of creating it. One of the things that I like the most about doing a project like this is the ability to experiment, both artistically and in terms of that "mastery of material". I've seen web videos of photographers who tell their audiences that one light goes here, the other one here, and a hair light goes over there, and how they use a length of string to check the distance of each light from their subject so that their setup is identical each time. All together now: yawnnnnnnnnnnnn ..... Even in the studio, where I can control everything, I normally breakdown the equipment after each shoot so that no such boring thing will occur.

Color, light, shadow and texture. The elusive harmony of form and composition. A look, a laugh, or a moment that draws you in.

Whatever I am seeking when I shoot, even if it is something that I've done many times,  if I am not stretching, at least in some dimension, I am not growing and am not giving everything I have to my artistic voice. In a commercial photographic setting, the client may think, and verbalize, that they "just want" <fill-in-the-blank>, but giving them something more than that is what differentiates and what results in an artistic vision.

The Creative Process - A Constant State of Agitation

If you're like me, you enjoy the times when things are happening; those times when things are getting done and when you are creating things. But if you are really like me, you also have a tendency to look ahead to the quiet times that follow the storm. A little of this is OK, but I think being creative and productive, and interesting to others requires us to be in a constant state of agitation. We need to be thinking of what to do next, how to create, how to do something better than the last thing that we did, and how to continuously reinvent ourselves. That restlessness is what drives the creative process.

It's a little like brewing beer. Huh? Well, when beer is brewed, the wort (pronounced like dirt), which is the mixture of grains, hops and water, is inactive until the yeast is "pitched" into it. Soon after this happens, the wort becomes very active and "agitated". My analogy is about to breakdown here because the Lowell City Councilor Franky Descoteauxcreative process doesn't involve turning sugar into alcohol, but never mind :-)  My point is, the introduction of that yeast causes some pretty violent agitation which, in turn, results in the creation of beer. Very productive indeed! Without the introduction of that yeast, no beer will result. In fact, the inactive wort will turn into something very nasty after a few days.

OK, so my analogy is a little out there, but I can feel the pulls in my own life that cause me to be creative and productive, or not. We all have times when we are doing things that we don't want to do and wish them to be done with. But don't wish away the good stuff. And don't avoid the chaos. Put yourself into challenging positions and places. It really took me a long time to get the confidence to ask people if they would pose for me, for no other reason than that I wanted to create a portrait of them. People almost never refuse. People are not going to come to you to create something for them until you create a body of work that demonstrates your ability to do so. You craft that by putting yourself out there, by challenging yourself, by getting restless, by thinking about the next thing to create. As tempting as it can be to be complacent and satisfied with your work to this point, don't. Pitch that yeast.

That Was The Week That Was

My apologies to the grownups of my youth for using that title (Google it ;-), but it was quite a crazy week last week. Last Friday, Amy and I attended the Westford, Massachusetts, Parish Center for the Arts Regional Art Event presentations. We were both informed during the week that we had both won a prize for one each of our entries. They don't tell you what place you may have made until you arrive at the ceremony and look at the program. When we did arrive, I looked down at the pro category to see that I had won 1st prize! Wow! This is the picture as it was hung in the gallery.

I have posted it before, but here is the original:

Then I checked the amateur category to see that Amy had also won 1st prize! She was already nervous, but that news was surreal to her. It was a fun night!

Here is a link to her blog where she shows her work and talks about that night: http://amybisson.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/traveling-in-my-discomfort-zone/

The week ended with a Tweetup, hosted by Kathleen Pierce, AKA bistrobroad@ (http://bistrobroad.com), and myself, at the La Boniche restaurant, on Merrimack Street in Lowell (http://www.laboniche.com).  There was a nice group there and we all got to finally meet many people with whom we had only tweeted. Thanks to everyone who could make it!

But Tuesday was marked by a really big happening at Western Avenue Studios. The Mary Richardson and the WCVB television show, Chronicle HD, came to WAS to do a feature on the studios and several of the artists. I was one of them! It was a pretty exciting day. I was asked to follow the crew around and document the day.

I, unfortunately, don't have shots of myself being interviewed, but they did video me as I photographed Lindsey, who very kindly agreed to spend the day in my studio and participate. This shot is one that I took while being videoed for the segment.

I will post another blog as soon as I know when the show will air, along with any information that I have about the video on their web site. It is here, if you want to check: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/chronicle/index.html

Me and My Shadow

I am constantly learning, or trying to. I don't have all of the answers. In fact, some days I could stand to buy a vowel... But sometimes I see photos that really leave me wanting less. I'm not really a fan of HDR, or that toasted look that is so readily available with Photoshop, but that isn't what I mean. I am thinking of the more basic concepts of light and shadow, and the seemingly irresistible urge to get light into all of those shadows, leaving nothing for the imagination.

Controlling the light that falls on your subject and everything else in the shot, whatever your subject might be, is fundamental to creating a good image. That goes for whatever type of light you're employing; I am referring to available light too. Creating a good photo does require controlling the light, even if the light source is the sun. If you do landscapes, then controlling the light means being where you want to be when the light is "right". Scout out your location and be there when the sun is exactly as you want it. If that means showing up at nautical twilight, then you are controlling your light by choosing when it is right. If you photograph people or objects, then trees, windows, curtains, almost anything can be used to control available light.

Boothbay at DawnSummer MorningMy point is, use the shadows too! People photographers who use strobes and hot lights sometimes have the urge to "open up the shadows". Fine. But sometimes, those shadows are what make the image interesting. Even totally black areas do that. Use them! Shadow creates depth, texture and contour for your subject. Shadows in the non-subject areas of an image cause the viewer's attention to be drawn first to the subject, and then provide some interest and maybe even mystery to the subject's surroundings.

The next two shots were available light with a fill, and available light with a gold reflector only, respectively.

JustinTosh FarrellI like to read blogs and articles in which the technical aspects of the shots are detailed, and sometimes the number and types of lights that are used are pretty surprising. I read one the other day in which a single person was under 5 lights! If I use more than two strobes for anything, it's very unusual. And usually my second strobe is for an accent, a streak of light on the background, or something shot through a "cookaloris" (something put between a light and a subject to create a pattern), such as a window, a window blind, etc.  This is a matter of personal preference though. I also tend to use my lights at the lowest power, sometimes inches from my subject. But that's the look that I am going for most of the time. Your mileage may vary...

The next three shots were done with one light. The first incorporated florescent ambient light. And "Melissa with Sweater" has no light in the front! A gridded light behind her is refecting off a gold reflector in front of her face.

Dug NorthMelissa with SweaterKerry
I am most definitely not showing my images in this post as the best examples of what I am trying to say, but I obviously can't illustrate that with other photographer's images without their permissions. I would however, encourage you to check out the images of other photographers who are masters of light and shadow. Here is a tiny list of my favorites for you to Google. Some are from another era, some from today, neither set in any particular order:

Irving Penn
Richard Avedon
Yousuf Karsh
Arnold Newman
Philippe Halsman

Joe McNally
Annie Leibowitz
Tracy Powell
Marty Umans
Zack Arias

One of These Things is Not Like The Other...

One of These Things is Not Like The Other...one of these things is not the same (Apologies to Sesame Street!)  This bit was always a favorite at my house when my son was little. But I was thinking this morning about photography (there's a shock), and how applicable this verse is. When we get started creating photographs the normal path to learning the art is to focus on technique and to imitate and emulate the masters. When I was a teenager my parents bought that great Time-Life book series on photography for me. I remember waiting anxiously for each edition to arrive and would get inspired by every page. The contemporary photographers at that time had a huge influence on me. My mind is still firmly rooted in the look of images created by Arnold Newman, Pete Turner, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. But there's a time when you need to be yourself. Imitation, emulation and outright copying are fine for a while, but whatever your art may be it has, at some point, to stand out from the crowd; to be unlike the others.

I read a blog recently in which the writer interviewed Set Godin about his latest book (http://www.digitalweddingforum.com/blog/our-interview-with-marketing-guru-and-author-seth-godin). This quote sort of jumped up and demanded notice:

    Seth: When everyone has a camera, and everyone thinks they are a photographic artist, it’s clear that access to the device is not a scarce resource. If that’s all you’ve got, I’m not going to pay you. The art isn’t in the taking of the picture. The art is in what you do the other 21 hours in a day.

    If you don’t like that, you should become an amateur and do what you love, but don’t expect to get paid for it!

Independent portrait photographers who are consistently creating images that could be mistaken for those from a retail studio should take notice. Of course there are always clients who want a basic, "school picture day" portrait, but even there, it's really important to raise that bar. If some potential client is comparing a handful of photographers and, absent any referrals to or prior knowledge about them, they all present the same style and quality, and one is the Mall retail portrait store, then the only thing these photographers have to differentiate themselves is price and possibly location. Google the portrait store at your local Mall and you will come to a very quick conclusion as to which one wins on price. In fact, lowering your price will not even help, unless you make it $0. If this sounds familiar you are selling a commodity. Wikipedia, (which knows all :-), defines commodity as "some good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is fungible, i.e. the same no matter who produces it." Sound familiar?

Seth Godin goes on to say:
    Seth: Stop looking for more business! The most important thing is to reinvent what it is you sell and to overwhelm your current clients with the experience they encounter when they engage you. This is what word of mouth will come from. Not from better photos, not from a better brochure, not from a cheaper price.

I am not sure that I agree with him concerning "better photos", both because I think that is ultimately where you differentiate yourself, but also because I feel he is contradicting his earlier statement. But if he means better photos, technically, I would agree, at least to a degree. In some future blog I will go on a rant about photo gear and its relationship to great photos (or lack of a relationship...), but I would interpret "better photos" to mean all aspects of your portfolio, including your vision, body of work, consistency and style, and in that case I feel that it matters a lot. But bringing that experience with which you will overwhelm a client, along with your vision and uniqueness is really what will make potential clients want to hire you. If you are the same as everyone else, nothing will do that; not even price.

Plan, plan and plan some more

The great Boston photographer, Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr., known as Fabian Bachrach, passed away last week at the age of 92. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/arts/design/02bachrach.html)

He came from a family of photographers, most of whom worked and still work in the family business. His grandfather, who started the studio, photographed Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg!

According to the NY Times article, when John F. Kennedy was a US senator, he sat for a portrait with Bachrach. The results were what Bachrach considered unusable, which, in the words of his son, "ate on my father for months and months and months". Any commercial photographer can relate, although most not at the same level as that of photographing a US senator. But when Kennedy became president, Bachrach convinced his office to let Kennedy sit for another portrait. This time, Bachrach was kept waiting for 8 hours only to be told that the session had been cancelled. Pleading to be allowed to go ahead with the session, he was given 10 minutes, "from start to finish", as the Times article says. This 10 minute session resulted in the president's official portrait, which is arguably the most well known portrait of Kennedy. See the NY Times article and the gallery of Bachrach's work to see the photo.

There are so many lessons here, for people photographers especially. When you screw up, the first thing is to admit it to yourself and to your client, and then to get over it. Easier said than done. But you can! I have a quote from Joe McNally on my wall. You can find it in his blog post, (http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/2008/09/10/cant-get-no-respect), look for the paragraphs that begin with "I’ve shot a lot more bad pictures than I’ll ever shoot good ones". That I read his quote periodically is closely related to one of my blogs from last week in which I talked about being the photographer you want to become. Even that phrase is a quote from another great photographer, Craig Tanner. But when you doubt yourself, step aside! Try to step away from your own person and ego for a minute and ask, what would <a photographer that I admire> do in this situation? Obviously, that person could be anyone that you admire, not necessarily another photographer.

Another lesson that I took away from the Bachrach anecdote was how necessary it is to plan. Plan, plan and plan some more. Try to envision what the situation will be like, how you will feel and how you will act and react. You need to be reacting to the environment and to the things that could not have been anticipated. You should already have thought about all of the things that you knew about beforehand. Clients don't want to wait for you to have a happy accident. The art, creativity and imagination that you bring to a commercial job begins where your technical knowledge and experience leaves off.

All right Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up

Last Saturday, Melissa, who was featured in a previous blog, kindly returned to help me create a stop-action video. The short, which I will post here on a future blog post, as well as on YouTube, will allow the viewer to observe a photo shoot of Melissa at my studio. Interspersed with the action will be the actual photos that I took as the "video" camera captured the action. This is not a video in the sense that you might think, but is shot with a still camera. That camera is on a tripod with a programmable shutter release causing it to fire every three seconds. It is also equipped with a PocketWizard transceiver that fires the strobes that I was also firing with the camera with which I was shooting. As you might imagine, this caused a few random failures due to shutters going off without adequate recycle time for the strobes, but that didn't happen as much as I had anticipated, and it was something that I was willing to live with.

Obviously, this technique is not my invention. It has been used quite a bit recently, most notably in the video called "Her Morning Elegance", by Oren Lavie (http://www.orenlavie.com), and is really just a technical variation on a normal video camera. But high-resolution still images captured with a photographer's existing equipment, as well as lighting by strobe makes it far more accessible to still photographers. On the other hand, like many things, it's a gimmick and as technology waits for no one, it's expiration date is probably not far off.

But Melissa is a great subject and was really patient as I attempted to keep all of the plates spinning in my studio to make this work. (For those who don't remember shows like Ed Sullivan, you might want to Google plate spinner. It was a simpler time...)  In fact, I went into this shoot not really anticipating that the shots that I was taking of Melissa would themselves be keepers because I was so consumed by the "film-making" part of the endeavor, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Nervousness and Photo Shoots

Everyone has it to some degree. Some people claim to never have it, while for others, it can be debilitating. But nervousness is often a very important participant in a photo shoot, for good or bad. Photo shoot subjects, unless they are professional actors or models, can come to a shoot bringing a suitcase for of nervousness; baggage in both senses of the word. People generally bring their nervousness to a shoot because they are unsure of what will happen, often feeling as though they will be responsible for knowing what to do.

As I have mentioned on a couple of occasions, I was a musician in a former life, and so thinking about nervousness has always been a part of my life. When you perform, whether it be musically, verbally, or some other way, you might have feelings of doubts or inadequacy, which manifest themselves as nervousness. I know that when I performed, especially when classical music was involved, I brought along with me the years of music teachers who had criticized my "sound" and technique. I still have the New Hampshire "All State" evaluation form from one of my auditions in high school which labeled my tone as "harsh". Yum! So in my typically defiant way, I went on to study the trumpet at Berklee, always putting myself into situations where my sound was of primary importance, eventually developing it to the point where it was the best aspect of my playing. But if you aren't aware of it, when you stand in front of an audience to perform, those old criticisms can come swirling back. Never mind that your audience has no idea that you have brought such baggage.

Getting back to the subject in a photo shoot though, it is often the case that the nervous person that arrives at your studio or location to be photographed has brought years of such baggage, but in this case, about themselves; their appearance, their behavior, etc.  The absolute worst thing that a photographer can do is to have his or her own baggage on display as well. Your subject has to feel that you are in charge of the situation. You need to make the person feel that they will be told, every step of the way, what to do, where to stand or sit, how to do so, etc., and that you will be sensitive to their discomfort and will be certain to alleviate it.

That being said, there is a certain kind of nervousness that is good for the photographer to have. It's really important to leave the destructive, baggage kind of the nervousness at home. It won't help you, the photographer, or your subject to feel as though you are in control and know what you are doing. It will signal to your subject that their own feelings of nervousness are validated. When I doubt myself, I use the recommendation of the excellent photographer, Zack Arias, that you just need to show up at every shoot as though you are shooting for Rolling Stone or some similar gig. As I said, I used to get really nervous as a musician, when performing classical music because of my feelings of unworthiness, but I found it helpful to step out of myself and imagine that I was Maurice Andre. I think that experience has helped me a great deal as a photographer to do likewise. It's really important to realize that there is a positive kind of nervousness though that need not adversely affect your abilities to shoot well, nor the ability of your subject to be themselves, but will, in fact, enhance your performance. That "edge", which I always feel before a shoot, and don't suppress, helps me think in that same out-of-body way. Rather than getting bogged down in what to do and how to do it, I start to think as I imagine Arnold Newman, Richard Avedon, or even Joe McNally would be thinking in that same situation. The difference that I can see in the faces and the demeanor of clients when I calmly control the situation on a shoot is pretty amazing. If you are a photographer, use this edge! If you are looking for a photographer, I would urge you to find one who has it.