Today’s Post by Joe Farace
President Franklin D. Roosevelt would not travel on the 13th day of any month and would never host 13 guests at a meal. Napoleon and President Herbert Hoover were also triskaidekaphobic, which an abnormal fear of the number 13.—unknown
I’m not triskaidekaphobic but am probably just as superstitious as the next person and my doctor tells me that I’m borderline OCD. I am chattering to much and being too personal, although since it’s True Confessions time…
It may come as a surprise to some of you but I didn’t start out to be a people photographer. When Mary and I opened our studio in 1982, we divided the workload between us based on what we were best at doing: She photographed people and I photographed things, mostly architecture and some products.
Every now and then because of scheduling and availability I would shoot a few business portraits but people were really Mary’s game. After having a serious health problem I decided to focus on writing about photography (and computers too as it turned out,) and later we sold the studio to one of our employees while Mary moved onto a new career. Then things changed a lot for me photographically. After looking at some of the new glamour photography that was appearing on the Internet I became interested in photographing people but had to start from scratch because I had sold all my lighting equipment to a photographer/friend in Dallas because “I was never going to photograph people.” That was when I learned to never, say “never.”
Because I couldn’t afford any new lighting equipment I started by using available light for my indoor and outdoor glamour photography.
How I Made this Portrait: One of the first people that I photographed after deciding to try glamour photography was Leslie, a 19-year old aspiring model. This portrait was made during our first shoot together and she might just have been one of my first muses because we had many portrait sessions together after this one. I photographed Leslie using only the window light from a North-facing bay window in the kitchen of my former home. The camera was a Canon EOS D60—not a 60D—with my former go-to portrait lens, the EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM lens (at 105mm.) Canon discontinued this useful lens but you can usually pick up used lenses from Amazon or KEH for a reasonable price. Exposure was 1/80 sec at f/4.5 and ISO 400
You can learn all of my tips, tools and techniques on shooting available light glamour photography in my book surprisingly titled Available Light Glamour Photography. New copies of the book are available from Amazon for $29.95 with used copies starting around ten bucks, as I write this. Kindle copes are $28.45 if you prefer a digital format.