Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“I am the easiest photographer to work with. I don’t have heavy equipment. I work out of one bag.”— Helmut Newton
On this Valentines Day it somehow seems appropriate that I should write a post about two of my photographic heroes and how, because of their influence, I became interested in glamour photography.
How did I get started in glamour photography? Or why should you care? (If that’s the case, skip today’s post and hopefully tomorrows will be more interesting to you.) For me, it was an indirect route and worth mentioning only because it might also describe you.
When my wife and I opened our studio in 1982, we divided the workload based on the type of images that we each liked making and what our clients needed. It turned out to be a simple division of labor: She photographed people and I photographed things, mostly architecture and some products. Every now and then because of scheduling and availability I would make a few business portraits or headshots but people were really Mary’s game. When, for health reasons, I took an extended sabbatical from the studio’s day-to-day operations, things changed.
Although their styles could not be more different, I had always loved the work of Peter Gowland and Helmut Newton. I have a few of the late Mr. Newton’s book but had been avidly reading and collecting Peter Gowland glamour photography books for many years. Later in his life, I was lucky enough to have a casual, pen pal (e-mail) relationship with him and my book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is dedicated to him and his wife and collaborator Alice Gowland. Sadly, he passed away before the book was published.
I got seriously interested in working in this genre after looking at some of the new glamour photography that was then appearing on the Internet but had to start from scratch. I sold all of my studio’s lighting equipment because “I wasn’t ever going to photograph people.” That was when I learned the hard way that you can “never say never” and started learning how to make glamour images with little or no lighting equipment. A number of posts that you see here about available light glamour, including one this coming Friday, were made during that time. When Mary and I move to Daisy Hill I was able to create an in-home studio and it was in that location that today’s feature image was made. The pandemic has hampered my recent glamour photography efforts but I remain hopeful for the future. Fingers crossed.
How I made this portrait: Today’s featured portrait is intended as a Valentine to my former muse, the amazing Erin Valakari. I made this photograph of Erin during our third shoot together on January 27, 2018 in my home studio using a concept that I call “shooting through a pose.” There’s more info on that technique in the linked post. Lighting for this portrait was provided by my normal contingent of one Paul C Buff AlienBee and two DigiBee monolights. Camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (at 45mm) with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/8 and ISO 200. Background was the no longer available Silverlake Photo Carbonite muslin backdrop hung on JTL background stands. The portrait was retouched and enhanced in Color Efex Pro using the Bi-Color Filer plus a dash of the Glamour Glow filter.
If you have any questions of constructive comments you can send me e-mail via the Contact page.
My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new copies available from Amazon for $31.52, as I write this. Used copies start for the bargain price around nine bucks, which seems like a hard-to-beat price for this useful and practical book. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.