#filmfriday is on hiatus today as I dust off a film camera, break out some rolls of film from the fridge and venture forth to make some new images. In its place is an image that may have come from Joe’s Movie Club with a look at a different kind of film—the movies, always a source of inspiration to me. This time, it’s Walt Disney…
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it’s not an art. The main thing about directing is photograph the people’s eyes.”—John Ford
It’s National Bubble Gum Day and it seems appropriate that I’m reminiscing about one of the more interesting and fun shoots I had with Jack Dean and his daughter Sarah cosplaying as Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
I’ve often written here about how movies influence and inspire my photography. The other night I was watching a Blu-ray of the Criterion Collection’s version of John Ford’s My Darling Clementine and was struck by the quality and style of the cinematography by Joe MacDonald who created what must surely have been the first film noir western. If you’ve never seen the restored version of My Darling Clementine, you haven’t really seen this movie.
I’m not as much influenced by TV shows mainly because they tend to be overlit, especially traditional network shows. Yet it was ABC TV’s Once Upon a Time that influenced my creating this image starring the then 16-year old Sarah Dean as Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
How I made this photograph
My portrait of Sarah was shot using a 16-megapixel Olympus E-M5 Mark I with an Olympus M.Zuiko 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 (at 28mm) lens with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/8 and ISO 200. This is and was a wonderful camera. The newer OM Systems version of this mirrorless camera is called the OM-5 and it’s a 20.4-megapixel model that, in overall appearance, appears similar to my E-M5. While I’ve held the new version in my hands at Mikes Camera in Lone Tree, Colorado, I have not been able to actually shoot one. How ’bout it OM System, call me.
As I recall, the lighting for this portrait was simple with a large Chimera softbox that was placed at camera right with a smaller, strip softbox located at camera left. I don’t recall the brand of studio lighting equipment Jack was using at the time and neglected (sorry) to get a shot of the official lighting setup we used that day. After capture, I applied some burning and dodging to the JPEG file that was followed by some light enhancement in Vivenza. Then I applied some Classic Camera effects from Analog Efex before using the Glamour Glow filter from Color Efex to add some soft focus.
PS: in looking through my files. I realized that when I made this image in Jack’s studio, I also photographed Sarah outdoors in front of his building that had real trees. At the time I didn’t realize that some of them were pretty good and somewhat different from the studio portraits, not only lighting-wise but were shot with an 18.1-megapixel Canon EOS 60D. If you would like to see any of these images in an upcoming Sunday series on outdoor portraiture, click CONTACT and let me know.
A Big Thank You: Technical assistance for the, lighting, fog machine (used later in the shoot) and staging for this project were provided by Sarah’s father, Jack Dean, and the featured image was shot in his studio in Brighton, Colorado.
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.
If you’re interested in learning how I shoot portraits and use cameras, lenses and lighting in my in-home studio and on location, you can pick up a used copy of Studio Lighting Anywhere from Amazon.com for around eighteen bucks used, as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99, if you prefer a digital format format.