My Sunday series about making portraits outdoor continues today with a portrait of Dottie, who I photographed at a group model shoot back when they were held in Northern Colorado. Mary also got to photographed her and, as usual, the style of our images were vastly different. Look for a new post next Sunday showing both of our approaches to photographing Dottie.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories.—Florence King
The best portraits seem to be ones that allow the subject to contrast with the background, making them stand out while adding drama to the photograph. This might mean making a small adjustment to your camera position, so take the time and pick the right spot. Ansel Adams once said that the difference between a good picture and a bad one was “knowing where to stand” and that’s just as true for portraiture as landscape photography.
Another one of my favorite techniques for outdoor portraiture is backlighting because it produces bright edges around your subject to separate them from the background. Backlighting can produce beautiful highlights on the subject’s hair while minimizing the effect of a less than exciting background, as was the case in the image at right.
How I made this portrait: Regular readers of this blog know one of my influences is the movies. This portrait of Dottie was influenced by Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is set in 1969. This time period coincided with what I think was the most intensely personal creative period of my life along with more than a little personal drama. Somehow these two things are related and there’s a section about this time in my book, On Photography, that was never published due to a lack of interest. Maybe that story will appear in a future Things I Promised Not to Tell post and to tell the truth, I think I’ll work on that right now…
The above portrait is a classic use of backlighting to add some interest to this shot of an aspiring model who was posing for the first time in a friend’s back yard. The camera used was a Canon EOS 5D Mark I with EF 28-135mm IS lens. Fill light was provided by an 550EX speedlight that later had its hot shoe ripped off when I stumbled carrying two cameras, each with a speedlite mounted. Nobody’s perfect.
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My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new and used copies available from Amazon for $34.95, as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those who prefer a digital format.