Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“I believe that I will never totally master photography. The day that I feel I know it all it will be time for the next adventure.”–Peter Gowland
When I moved to Colroado back in the early eighties, I used to enjoy taking walks during my lunch break and one of my favorite stops was at a bookstore located on Denver’s Sixth Avenue. Sadly, it’s no longer there. One of the first books I purchased from the store was Peter Gowland’s Secrets of Photographing Women. It was published in 1986 and used copies are still available on Amazon at affordable prices That book was my first serious introduction to the craft of glamour photography, something that had been in the back of my head for years but I never had the chance to try.
Working in a New Genre
That interest started to coalesce later when I made the on-line acquaintance of several talented glamour photographers, including the late Dave Hall, and with his encouragement was able to actually start photographing glamour models. For the most part, many of the images I posted on-line met with favorable comment but not all of them were complimentary. What I tried to do was learn what I could from the criticisms, ignore what I didn’t agree with–they’re ultimately my photographs–and turn most of the criticisms into a learning experience, including the good, the bad, and sometimes the ugly.
The Good: Late in his life I got to know Peter Gowland and considered him to be a friend. My book, Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography yjay was published shortly after Mr. Gowland passed away is dedicated to “the memory of Peter Gowland and his wife Alice. Their photography and their lives were and have been an inspiration for my own efforts at creating glamour images. Alice Gowland passed away in 2014, four years after he husband.
The Bad: During a complex “Reply All” email chain that began with one of Shutterbug‘s most prestigious writers and the then-editor talking about payments and one where all the magazine’s freelance contributors were copied, one of them decided to chime in to criticize all the images appearing in a recent issue. Keep in mind, that I was receiving all the emails but not participating in this discussion; it was like watching a slow motion car wreck. He commented that my photographs were “channeling the ghost of Peter Gowland.” I’ve always considered his comment about my work to be a compliment, although I don’t think he meant it that way. So, featured today is an unabashed homage to Peter Gowland just because.
One of my friends subscribes to Google Alerts that sends emails to the user when it finds new results, such as web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, or scientific research, that match the user’s search terms, such as their name. I don’t do this mainly because I do not want or need to know if somebody doesn’t like me or my photographs. They are welcome to their opinions but I don;t need to waste my time thinking about it.
How I made this photograph: This image was made during a photo shoot with Erin Valakari and may be the most “Peter Gowland shot” I’ve ever made, although I will admit to not thinking about that at the time. The lighting setup used a Paul C. Buff DigiBee 800 monolight with a Plume Ltd hexagonal Wafer soft box attached that was placed at camera right with a 16 x 30-inch Westcott Apollo Strip soft box located at camera left. Another DigiBee 800 with a 48-inch Dynalite Quad Square black/silver umbrella was located at camera left and placed neat the back of my home studio. The background was a Silverlake Photo Accessories Carbonite painted muslin background suspended from JTL background stands. The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (at 31mm) with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/10 and ISO 200.
PS: For my Patreon subscribers: Look for an upcoming Password Protected post featuring Ms. Valakari starting with uncensored images from this and other shoots involving red garments. .
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