Saving the World One Pixel at a Time

1/400 sec at f/5 and ISO 200

When I was a young photographer I asked my mentor, what was the worst thing I could do during a photo session. My guess was going to setting the camera on M-synch when using electronic flash (remember those days?) or a similar technical glitch but to my everlasting surprise, her said, “not talking to the people.” If you don’t talk to the models you’re photographing you’re never, ever going to make good images.

If you’ve ever participated in a group model shoot, you know what I mean. Photographers are using their longest possible focal length lenses—hat’s what Sports Illustrated swimsuit shooters do—blast away with smoking memory cards and occasionally, the smarter guys will holler, “hey you, look here!” Of such posing directions, masterpieces are created. Or you could try something that might help you produce more successful images.

Even in a group shoot you should introduce yourself to the model and when you do, be sure to ask and use her name when photographing her. I can’t emphasize how important that is. Models relate to photographers who care about them and trust them to make good photographs and will often play to you before the other photographers who haven’t made the same effort.

To show a model how to stand or place her body and hands, I put myself in the pose but let her give me her interpretation, which is always much better. From camera position, I refine the pose, after explaining to the model that when I say, “look left” or “look up” what I mean is to move her face gradually and slowlyin that direction. Then, I’ll tell her when to stop. After working with the same model after a first shoot, I find we can often communicate with hand signals because I prefer a quiet shooting environment. Oh sure, there are some models you want to shoot in a studio with music playing at eardrum shattering decibels but you will find that the models who do their best work under these conditions are few and far between. I’ve only met two.

1/80 sec at f/7.1 and ISO 800

Some glamour models, such as Michelle Monroe (at left,} are so “larger than life,” that they can be intimidating to newer or younger glamour photographers. When working with a drop-dead gorgeous model, some shooters have a tendency to forget everything they ever knew about photography and just take pictures. Instead, you should take your time, making sure she looks her best even if it mean creating fewer but better pictures. Some photographers get so tongue-tied when photographing exceptional models that they make mistakes and even damage equipment. I never broke any camera gear before I photographed Michelle but I’ve always been clumsy. Let’s blame it on that.

Glamour is a genre that has its roots in the pin-up or “cheesecake” photography of the 1940’s but over time has evolved. While early glamour photography was studio bound and many photographers still prefer that style it doesn’t mean your photographs can’t include some of the model’s surrounding environment.

1.60 sec at f/1.8 and ISO 640

At one end of the spectrum there’s boudoir photography which is practiced by many portrait photographers and includes the kind of sexy photographs wives and girlfriends give their significant others for Valentines Day. On the other hand, there is photography that varies from explicit to fine art. Deciphering the nuances sometimes means that you’re dancing on the razor edge between portrait or figure photography genres but as Jerry Seinfeld once said, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Any successful glamour photography can include most of the following elements.

Sexiness. Glamour photography focuses on the depiction of a subject with a strong emphasis on sensuality and trends today lean toward a more natural look at the same time.

Technique: In pursuit of the ultimate glamour image photographers use make-up, camera and lighting techniques to produce an appealing and sometimes romanticized vision of the model. While some photographers prefer gritty realism, put me in the idealized camp.

Sharp focus? Glamour photographers such as the late Peter Gowland preferred crisply rendered images. Others, like me, like to add touch of softness and retouching to the image in the digital darkroom. It’s up to you because ultimately it all comes down to the…

Subject: Casting the right subject and having rapport with her helps create the uniquely collaborative effort involved in glamour photography. She must be comfortable being photographed and it’s the photographer’s job to make sure the subject is relaxed because it will make the session go smoothly and let both of you create the best possible glamour images.

Joe is the author of the forthcoming book “Available Light Glamour Photography.” Look for it this fall from Amherst Media.

The key part of determining any flash exposure is the lens’ aperture but shutter speed plays an important role too. The duration of electronic flash units is quite short— 1/1000th of a second is not uncommon. The exposure is made while the shutter is open but the actual shutter speed will be slower because there is a maximum synchronization speed that varies with each camera and is the time when the shutter open, the flash fires, and the shutter closes. What happens when you shoot at a higher shutter speed than your flash will synch? You get just part of a picture! What part is missing depends on which way the shutter travels and how much you get—if anything—is determined by the shutter speed. Nowadays, many cameras have a high-speed synch mode that works with specific speedlights. Check your users’ manual and see if your camera offers this feature.

Caption: The above portrait was made with a Pentax 6×7 and 75 f/4.5 SMC lens. Flash exposure was 1/60 sec at f/11 but clearly I needed to shoot it at the 6×7’s correct synch speed of 1/30 sec

On the other hand, slower shutter speeds allow more of the ambient light to influence the overall exposure, mostly the background because the aperture you select determines the main subject’s exposure. Using a slow shutter speed can open up the background allowing more ambient light to affect the exposure and show more separation between subject and backdrop. But beware the color temperature of any artificial lights that are part of that ambient light. Depending on how bright they may be using slower shutter speeds can add colors that can pollute the skin tones in your shot. The solution? Increase shutter speed but not too much! On the other hand, warmer light sources can add a pleasant warmth to the photographs with makes the camera’s LCD preview screen your new best friend.

Experiment. Don’t go out with preconceptions of what a picture will look like. That will block you from being receptive to something new and exciting. – Mason Resnick

What my friend Mason was saying applies to all kinds of photography, including portraiture or glamour where it’s all too easy to set a subject on a posing stool and place them in “Pose A”, then move then into “Pose B,” making the whole process so mechanical even R2D2 could make this kind of portrait. But that’s now what your clients and subjects want. They want a portrait of themselves or a loved one that looks different from the last portrait you made and one that captures that subject’s individuality.

The same goes with your lighting. I once helped a friend who was sick for a few days and did sittings for of his high school senior customers. Before taking over filling in, the studio’s assistant showed me their lighting system that included strings were attached to the subject with different knots representing different subject-to-light distances that were used to maintain a consistent lighting ratio. That subject sat in (not literally) nailed down position while the lights were moved to the various with the string’s knots placed on their nose. No kidding. That way, all his subject got the same consistent lighting which made retouching much easier and faster in the sometime production line world of high volume portraiture.

Sometime you can get by with just one soft box as the above lighting set-up demonstrates. Using only a single Broncolor Litos head with 28-inch lightbank placed at camera left and aimed at the subject with no (count’em) reflectors—just the main light—as you see it here. And here the light was placed at camera left out of camera range of the EF 135mm f/2.8 SF used for the portrait. Lighting was metered with my old dependable Gossen Star F light meter and as always I typically shoot a few test shots to get one that produces the best exposure and histogram.

Caption: This is on of the images created during my one soft box shoot with Colleen was made using a Canon EOS ID Mark IIN and EF 135mm f/2.8 SF lens with an exposure of 1/60 sec at f/10 and ISO 100. ©2012 Joe Farace

EOS 5D, 1/160 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 400

There is much more to black and white photography than simply an absence of color. Maybe I wouldn’t feel this way if the first photographs had been made in full color,but that didn’t happen and, like many photographers, I grew up admiring the works of W. Eugene Smith and other black and white photojournalists who photographed people at work, play, or just being themselves. As a creative medium, traditionalists may call it “monochrome” and digital imagers may prefer “grayscale,” but it’s still black and white to me.

Black and white is a wonderful media for making portraits because the lack of color immediately simplifies the image, causing you to focus on the real subject of the photograph instead of their clothing or surroundings. Sometimes the nature of the portrait subject demands that the image be photographed in black and white. Arnold Newman’s portrait of composer Igor Stravinsky could never have been made in color and have the same impact that is has as a monochrome image.

There are also the trendy aspects associated with creating images in black and white. MTV, motion pictures and fashion magazines periodically “rediscover” black and white as a way to reproduce photographs that are different from what’s currently being shown. Right now, many professional photographers are telling me that they’re seeing a higher than normal demand for black and white portraits than previously was the case. Individual and family portrait purchases like these are driven by these same trends.

While you could always use real color filters on your camera to archive the same effects there are major advantages of using digital filters: While most in-camera metering systems automatically take “filter factors” (See “Filter Factor”) into consideration, you still have to look through and compose through a colored filter whose factor might range from three and five. In addition, a purely digital solution is an easier one to live because the exposure for no filter is identical to one with the dark red filter.

Tip: Filter Factor: In the world of traditional photography, the light loss caused by a filter’s absorption and color density is expressed as a filter factor. A 2X factor means the exposure should be increased by one stop, 3X means one and one-half stops, etc. When using several filters at once, filter factors, aren’t added together but instead are multiplied reducing depth of field or slowing shutter speeds.