Today’s Post by Joe Farace
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.—Friedrich Nietzsche
For another take on this subject, you might want to check out my post The Art of Capturing a Portrait Subject’s Essence
Once upon a time I accompanied my wife on a business trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico. After lunch at my favorite Mexican restaurant, I walked past a group of young women having their lunch and overheard one of them say to the other, “You can’t capture the essence of a person with a photograph.”
Metaphysically we could all argue all day about what constitutes a person’s “essence” and I’m sure Nietzsche would be the guy to have that conversation with…
I think that most photographers would agree that, when making a person’s portrait, it’s not only possible but also desirable that you also capture their essence. Otherwise, it’s just a picture of a person having their portrait made. It could be that in some young people’s minds the idea of a portrait is limited to their concept of a cell phone selfie, which I believe is the farthest thing from capturing anyone’s essence or even any definition of a photograph itself.
For this post, I went searching for an example of where I thought that I captured a portrait subject’s essence —using a 35mm film camera. I started my search with Kim, who may just have been my first ever muse during the film era. When it came time to select an image for this post I knew exactly where to look and I wanted to pass along the story behind this image for any aspiring portrait and glamour photographers out there:
When working with any new model, it’s been my experience that even when photographing a professional model it takes time for both parties to become totally comfortable with one another. How long of a time depends on both the subject and the photographer. Even though the images that Kim and I made on our first shoot were quite good, I believe any really great photographic relationship takes time for each party to get fully comfortable working together. But when it happens, it’s magic!
The image at right was created on, I think, Kim and my third shoot together, which was almost one year after our initial portrait session. I remember the exact instant when I clicked the shutter on this photograph as if it were yesterday: It was the same moment that I realized that each of the images we were making that day would be great! (This is similar to what happens with The Three Phases of Photographer’s Creative Life.) And that trend of excellence continued over the next several years that Kim that I worked together before she moved out of state.
How I Made this Photo: I photographed Kim in the area between the living and dining rooms of my former home using mostly available light with (maybe) a reflector placed at camera left. The image was made using a Contax 167 MT, similar to the one I recently acquired, and a Carl Zeiss 85mm f/1.8 lens with Kodak Tri-X film. I can’t remember who processed the film but scans of the film were made using Kodak’s original Photo CD process. They were opened using Lemke Software’s GraphicConverter producing fairly good quality image files but the software is not without its quirks for those, like me, using older computers and OS. (You can see the original above right.)
The digital file was lightly retouched, as best as you can with a monochrome image, I decided to colorize it using Palette.fm that uses an AI to automatically and colorize black and white photos and think it produced a passable image, although you might prefer the original black and white image. Then the Glamour Glow filter from Color Pro was lightly applied to give it a bit of an vintage look.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.
Several photographs of Pam appear in my book Available Light Glamour Photography that’s available from Amazon with new copies of the book for just $29.95 with used copies starting around twenty-one bucks as I write this. The Kindle version is $28.45 for those preferring a digital format.