I took a quick look at the Dawoud Bey site.
Looks to me like they're all done at a wide aperture, just enough DOF to
capture the subject & throw the rest of the background slightly out of
focus (f/4 - f/5.6). It may be a slightly longer lens, a short telephoto.
On Pentax, with the crop factor, a 50mm prime comes out looking like a
75mm lens.
They also all appear to be classic window light portraits. The window is
a BIG, SOFT light. He appears to be adding flash for fill.
But you don't have to use flash, you can use a sheet of white mat-board
as a reflector & get another student to hold the board up to reflect the
window light as fill. Get two students at a time so they can swap off
holding the reflector for each other.
Focus on the eyes. The key here appears to be window light, subject in
focus & everything else soft.
Tell the director that if he wanted photos by Dawoud Bey, he should have
hired Dawoud Bey. Do the best you can & don't apologize for your images.
If you haven't been using a tripod, don't start now. You'll spend too
much time fiddling with the tripod & lose your subjects.
For the longer term get a light-weight light stand, a small soft-box
that will work with your flash & some inexpensive radio triggers and
learn to balance ambient light with flash fill. The Strobist is real
good for that.
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101-start-here.html
From there it's all just a matter of practice. Next year, you'll be better.
On 9/23/2014 8:20 AM, Eric Weir wrote:
I’m serving as volunteer photodocumentarian for a youth development project in
the community in which I worked before retiring. The project brings Emory
University students together with middle and high school age youth from this
extremely diverse low-income community around storytelling—collecting stories,
composing stories, presenting stories; stories of the participating youth
themselves—many are refugees and have dramatic stories to tell; stories of
significant adults in the community; and through the latter stories of the
community.
The director of the project has decided he wants decent, interesting portraits of the
youth for an assignment he wants to give them. He has a model, a wonderful book of
simple, interesting, and beautiful portraits of high school youth done by a
professional photographer, Dawoud Bey.
<http://www.dawoudbey.net/index.php/photographs/class-pictures/> I did the best
I could without notice last week. I spent the hour and a half of the session getting
in the faces of individual students. Gradually the students I got comfortable with
what I was doing. I have not finished processing the images yet, but I sense that
there are going to be very few that I would consider adequate for the purpose.
I think I’m going to have to do something different this week, which is the
last opportunity to get the portraits before they are needed. I’m thinking of
taking a tripod, setting it up somewhere it the room in which the project
meets, and pulling students out one-by-one. That is going to be challenging
enough, but I have no idea what to do to get interesting photos, photos that
are at least somewhat revealing of the character of the subjects, once I have
the kids in front of the camera.
I am frankly intimidated by the director’s model, the Dawoud Bey book. No way
am I going to be able to do anything lie what he has done, but something like
what he has done is what is wanted/needed. Suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA USA
[email protected]
"Our world is a human world."
- Hilary Putnam
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Science - Questions we may never find answers for.
Religion - Answers we must never question.
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