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 too long ago, there was an on-line discussion about what inspires people to create photographs. For me, it’s often new things that inspire me. It could be a new camera or maybe it’s a new lens or maybe just a new place to make portraits. Those broad topics aside, the number one influence on my photography remains the movies…
Today’s featured image is my homage to the late François Truffaut’s 1971 film Two English Girls. OK, I know; there’s only one woman in the shot but, to me anyway, the image’s seventies vibe is right. As a young photographer, coming of photographic age in the 1970’s I was influenced by many of Truffaut’s films but for some reason it took me many years later to make this image. And if you think that I’m obsessed with using the movies as a source of inspiration, you would be right. For another post on this subject, 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 film SLR that I’m still kicking myself for selling and the beautiful Carl Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 lens. The film used for this portrait was one of Kodak’s color negative films, I don’t remember which one and the exposure were unrecorded.The scan was from Kodak’s Photo CD process and opened using Lemke Software’s GraphicConverter that produced fairly good quality files from a Photo CD disc but the software is not without its quirks for those people of using older computers and OS.
While traveling around my area, I still look for and make notes and sometimes snapshots of the different kinds of places that could serve as interesting locations for a portrait session. You can even go looking for portrait locations on purpose and 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 that chair as a posing aid. (Thanks, Brad.)
I have yet to shoot any real portraits with my newfound interests in film photography but would certainly like too. I’ve made a few snapshots of Mary and my friend 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 month. When and if it happens, I write about it here.
PS: Just a reminder: Podcast #4 is live now on my YouTube channel, Joe Farace’s Videos, featuring a look at a look at my Snap a Frame a Day National Photo Month project, response to a Q&A that reveals a fanboy confession and an unboxing related to a previous Q&A
If you’re interested in learning my approach for shooting glamour portraits with film, you can pick up a new copy of my long out-of-print book Part-time Glamour Photography, Full-time Income from Amazon.com for $14.99 or used starting around four bucks, as I write this. No Kindle version is available.