The only challenge in making good environmental portraits is in gaining the willing complicity of the person you've been sent to document. Since I'm not a big fan of hunting any image I make of its practitioners is going to have some sort of subtext that questions the whole pursuit. While it may be too subtle to rise to most people's attention I made the image above as a caricature of a portrait hunter. A bit too serious and a bit too intense for a man sitting on a porch just outside a comfortable house in central Texas.
It was a different time in publishing when I made this image. We spent time. We had time. I set up a large soft box with a flash head powered by an 1200 watt second power pack. The box is just out of frame to the right and used close in. I didn't use any fill on the left side of the frame. I set up a Hasselblad camera on a tripod and made twelve shots with 120 film, using a 150mm f4.0 lens.
After souping the film in my darkroom I carefully printed the full square on a number of sheets of 8x10 resin coated paper until I narrowed in on the look and feel I wanted for the print. Then I translated the settings under the enlarger to print the photograph in a larger scale on 16 X 20 inch, fiber based paper. As was my practice in the day I made one print just a little light, one right on the money and one a bit darker. The reality was that paper "dried down" to a different density than what one saw in the developer or wash trays. The idea was to bracket what you saw in the soup so that one of the prints would, in its drying trajectory, hit the spot you wanted to see.
I was happy with the image after it dried (the lighter initial exposure worked best) so I made a point to print two more for myself. Sadly, magazines rarely returned black and white prints after use; I wanted to make sure I had a good copy.
Could I have done this digitally? Of course, but it was the work itself that had merit for me. The whole process is what sharpens the vision, not just the outcome.
7 comments:
Do you miss film? Digital must be so much quicker (and easier?) for professional work.
The most striking thing about this portrait are his eyes. Very intense.
Did the magazine hire the actor, Dabney Coleman, as talent for this shoot?
Love the Rolex peeking out from under the sleeve!
Excellent portrait.
One of the things that struck me is that I was viewing the picture on a relatively small part of my computer screen, so I was looking at maybe 900 x 900. Yet the picture conveyed everything about the subject, including not only light and dark, but texture and mood.
People are constantly talking about the latest ultra-megapixel cameras, but the part of the picture that impressed me was the first 0.5 MP.
(I realize that 160 film printed on a good paper has a lot more detail than that, but you know what I mean.)
@Wally, first thing I thought when I saw it. It's probably something his 9 to 5 character would do.
Looking at the picture before seeing the text. My first thought was:
"What a self-important little monkey, thinking he is the BaddestAss thing on the Serengeti while he clings to his gun for safety!
Subtext successful, and well done! :)
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