Photography

Studio Portraiture

September 3, 2009 September 3, 2009 "Who is familiar with the work of Karsh?" Hands go up. This week, we're going to be studying his work and trying to understand how he lit his portraits. This was the beginning of two weeks of portraiture classes with Jennifer Hudson, and they were some of our best yet at CDIA. The first week was studio portraiture, where we learned about sculpting the face with different patterns like loop, rembrant, and butterfly. A lot of time was also spent on posing and the tricky business of where to put the model's hands, something deceptively difficult to get right. This was the first class where we used hot lights, and they are quite a different beast than the studio strobes we used in previous classes. Mid-week everyone brought in friends as models and our usual orderly and organized classroom became photographic chaos, with four simultaneous studios set up for high key and low sets. Models, photographers, assistants, and passerby-voyeurs all made for an energetic and exciting but exhausting day. Our last shooting day of the week was dedicated to the film noir style epitomized by Hollywood photographers like George Hurrell, and I think we were all surprised by how well everything came out. Classmates and friends became starlets and detectives that we hardly recognized in the final shots. The following week we built on the skill set, but took it out into the streets of Boston. Our main shooting assignments were at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) and Boston's Back Bay. Our time spent at the MFA was intriguing. Jennifer had us spend a morning studying paintings, and we all chose one in particular that we liked. We then had to explain to the class why we chose it, in particular what about the posing and lighting we were drawn to. After lunch the class was scattered to all ends of the MFA and we shot in groups. My group chose the Japanese garden, and we all got some great shots there. The following day we were unleashed in downtown Boston and we shot urban scenes. In the afternoon we tried to recreate the paintings we chose the previous day, and this in particular was an excellent education in the wealth of ideas available to the photographer, who is also a student of fine art. Emulating the canvas in portraiture is something that had never occurred to me, but after seeing the original and creative re-imaginings of my classmates, it's an exercise that bears repeating. Those two weeks were probably the most hectic, exhausting, and challenging yet, but everyone's computer screens were filled the next week with work that seemed a cut above what we had previously done, and I dare say that this was the first class where many of us started to get it; we actually started to feel like budding professionals instead of struggling students. It's hard to believe our class is past the half-way point in the program in terms of time, but if the two weeks of portraiture were any indication of what's to come, and I think they are, then the hardest, most challenging, and best work is yet to come. Jennifer was an amazing teacher and everyone is looking forward to having her class again for Weddings I and II. Now I need to go and scrounge up some money for hot lights and toy guns, I want to shoot some more Noir.