> On 23 Sep 2014, at 13:20, Eric Weir <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> [...]
> 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.
>
They are excellent portraits, really first class. They remind me of Jane Bown's
work, so you're right to be intimidated! You need to manage expectations!
Technically you could emulate him, and Bown, by using simple natural light and
a short-ish lens. Jane Bown normally used a 50mm lens on a 35mm Olympus camera,
shooting Tri-X. She set the cameras at 1/60th at f2.8. I think she cropped
routinely, otherwise the faces would show some distortion. Her framing was
usually tighter than Bey's, which very nicely shows the context. They both seem
to have used large natural light sources. Bown often used pubs because they
have big windows. Schools over here also have big windows, so maybe they do
where you are.
I think in your position I might bring 3 or 4 students into the room at a time,
with the subject obviously in front of you, and the others behind. That way
they will probably feel less nervous; if they know each other you might get
some good shots of the subject reacting and interacting with the others. Jane
Bown was often taking pictures while her subject was being interviewed, so they
forgot about her. maybe you could get one of their classmates to i terview them
briefly while you took pictures.
Another possibility if the subject is on their own, is get them to say their
favourite swear word, or 'banana' or 'sausage' or whatever else is guaranteed
to make people laugh. Two or three frames in quick succession often works.
People relax a little after the first frame, not expecting a second, and their
smile or face looks more natural.
One thing that Bailey, or Penn or Avedon or someone used to do was just put the
person in front of the camera and watch them without speaking, snapping the
shutter occasionally. Eventually you just adopt your default pose and that's
when the good portraits tend to happen.
B
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