Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”―
Not long ago, there was an discussion on-line about what inspires photographers to create certain types of images. New things can can inspire me. It could be a new camera or maybe it’s a new lens or maybe just a new place for me to make portraits. Those broad topics aside, the number one influence on my photography, especially portraiture, is, notably, the movies.
What Inspires Your Photography?
Today’s featured image is my homage to the late François Truffaut’s 1971 film Two English Girls. In the film a young Frenchman meets an Englishwoman in Paris, who invites him to her family home where he fall in love with her sister. I know; there’s only one woman in this shot but, to me anyway, the image’s seventies vibe is right.
If you think I’m obsessed with using the movies as a source of inspiration, you would be right. As a young photographer who came of photographic age during the 1970’s I was heavily influenced by many of Truffaut’s films but it took me many years to make this image. It took time to find the right model and the right setting for me to pull all the elements together to make this portrait. For another of my takes on the subject of movie-inspired portraiture, please read my post “Old Hollywood Style Glamour Photography,” when you have the time.
How I made this portrait: I photographed this young model using a Contax 137 MD Quartz SLR that I’m still kicking myself for selling and the beautiful Carl Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 lens. I’ve since replaced the camera with a Contax 167MT but not the lens, at least not so far. The film used was Kodak color negative films and the exposure were unrecorded.The scan was from Kodak’s Photo CD process and opened using Lemke Software’s GraphicConverter that produces fairly good quality files from images from Photo CD discs but the software is not without its quirks for anyone using older computers and OS.
My Approach: While traveling around Colorado, I look for and make notes and sometimes snapshots of different kinds of places that might serve as interesting locations for a portrait session. You can even go looking for portrait locations on purpose or they may be closer to your home than you might otherwise think. This specific portrait was made in a friend’s backyard photo studio with me using the chair as a posing aid. (Thanks, Brad.)
I have yet to shoot new portraits using cameras and lenses I acquired because of my newfound interests in film photography but my goal is to try to shoot some next month when I have a studio session scheduled with Erin Valakari . I’ve made a few snapshots using film of Mary and my photographer pal Barry Staver during my Snap a Frame a Day project for National Photo Month but they were just that, snapshots. I would like to do something more, like the featured portrait, using film, sometime in the next few months or maybe when it gets a little warmer. As I write this, the low temperature is 14 degrees F, with temps in the single digits forecast for this weekend
PS: Just a reminder: The Holiday Edition of the Pixel, Grain & Cookies podcast is live now on my YouTube channel, Joe Farace’s Videos, featuring a look at how Barry Staver and I photograph people. It includes some interesting as well as hilarious anecdotes about how Barry created some of his iconic images,
If you’re interested in learning about my approach for shooting glamour portraits using film, you can pick up a new copy of my now out-of-print book Part-time Glamour Photography, Full-time Income from Amazon.com for $28.99 or used copies starting around twelve bucks, as I write this.