It’s #anythingcanhappenday and today’s post features a portrait of the amazing Erin Valakari (@valatheartist.) This image was originally shot as part of an update to her portfolio. Also August is Happiness Happens Month.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions.” — The Dalai Lama
I’ve found that photographers draw inspiration from many sources. One of my friends finds it in old master’s paintings. I draw inspiration for some of my images from the movies. But there are other times when the inspirations are provided by a client who wants your photographs to match something they’ve seen or images that were created by another photographer.
Matchy-matchy
“Matchy-matchy” is an term used to describe clothes, accessories or room decor that are too perfectly color-coordinated or patterned
When Mary and I owned our studio, we had many clients who were involved in agriculture. For one assignment, the client wanted us to match the lighting that was done for another of his projects that featured, at least, five different light sources and each one had a different colored gel on it. He wanted us to duplicate that lighting style for a shoot in Florida in the extremely wet interior of a mushroom farming operation. How did it turn out? We didn’t exactly match the lighting but Mary and her assistant did a really great job and, more importantly, the client was happy with the results.
More recently, a photographer friend was referred a job from the shooter who had previously done the client’s work and was retiring. It sounded so simple; Just a series of head shots. The kicker was that my friend had to match the exact lighting style, which the other photographer kindly shared with him and use the exact same grey background. Savage Universal makes 16 different shades of gray backgrounds including nine distinctively toned seamless papers as well as options in vinyl, canvas, and collapsible cloth. He never figured out which specific grey background to use and did his best to match the background and lighting but most importantly, the client was happy with the results.
Despite what Yoda says, sometimes just trying to do the best job may be good enough to get the project successfully finished. And that’s what I tried to do during this particular portrait session with Erin Valakari.
Making Photographs Together
I recently watched Frank Capra’s 1937 classic film Lost Horizon and was struck not just by Joseph Walker and Elmer Dyer’s cinematography but by the still images that were shot using 4×5 cameras and used to illustrate a “making-of” video on the disc. This was truly the golden age of Hollywood still photography. All this was going through my head when I made this image of Erin Valakari that was inspired by the various film versions of The Thief of Bagdad. There have been, at least, six film adaptations of this story with the 1924 and 1940 versions considered the most famous,
How I Made these Portraits: Erin Valakari is of middle Eastern descent so has the right look for my The Thief of Bagdad homage. Her costume may be Persian but it also may be Indian and I want to assure you that no cultural approbation is intended. This portrait is simply my attempt at producing an an old-fashioned, Technicolor movie look.
I photographed Erin in my home studio using a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with a Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (at 45mm) with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/10 and ISO 200. The lighting was provided by a Paul C. Buff DigiBee 800 monolight with a Plume Ltd Wafer softbox attached that was placed at camera right. Another DigiBee 800 with an 18-inch OMNI reflector was placed behind a Westcott 42 x72-inch Scrim Jim that had a white translucent cover. In the back of my studio (at camera left,) I placed a Paul C Buff AlienBees 800 monolight with 16 x 30-inch Westcott Apollo Strip soft box. Paul C Buff is not a sponsor of me or this blog. I do not get a single penny from you clicking those links; they are provided just for your convenience. The background used was Savage Universal’s two-sided Monsoon collapsible backdrop.
The as-captured RAW file was enhanced in Photoshop (see original RAW file above right) before being processed in Exposure Software’s Exposure, which has a collection of Cinema presets and I used the Summer Blockbuster + saturation present. Next I dropped the file into Color Efex where I first applied the Tonal Contrast filter, followed by the Glamour Glow filter to produce the look I was trying to achieve.
My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography and includes information on all of the cameras used as well as the exposure data for each image. Used books are available from Amazon for $32.91, as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.