I have a couple of excuses for you to pick from to explain why I haven't updated my blog for a while.
The first is that I was waiting for some images to be published before I used them in this blog update, as a matter of common courtesy to GamesTM Magazine. I figured that it wouldn't be too professional to publish some content of their magazine before they did.
Another fine excuse is that every time I sat down to write about it, I realised that it's basically impossible to say anything about portraiture that hasn't already been said. What can I tell you that hasn't been said before? I could go with the "capturing someone forever in a moment in time" angle, as if I were some kind of voodoo photographer (you see this line a lot on wedding photographer sites). I could bore you with the basics of proper posing of your subject, how to relax your subject, etc. etc.
The list goes on. Not that I'll necessarily have anything drastically new to tell you about portraiture myself. When I write these entries, I always try my hardest to make them a little different and avoid clichéd writing techniques. Again, I'm not saying I'm always successful, but I'm always trying (there's a cliché right there).
I hold similar anxieties about the process of portraiture photography itself. You can guarantee from a purely mathematical point of view that the great idea you've just come up with has been thought of and created before; most likely it has been executed more effectively, too.
Of course, this goes for all photography. You could drive yourself insane trying to think of a way of creating something totally unique. By the same token, it can end up being counter-productive when you get to a point of creating an image that is totally obscure and different just for the sake of it. You lose a truth about your own work if the idea is so gratuitously alternative, obscure or surreal that it's no longer connected to you in any way as an artist.
The love behind the image disappears, and a tangible quality to the piece is lost. I feel uncomfortably disingenuous if I'm creating something purely because I think the style of that image will appeal to others. To quote Mo Sizlak from the Simpsons "It's post modern! Y'know, weird for the sake of weird".
The trade off, then, is the trickiest part of creating engaging portraiture. I'm usually averse to proverbs, and it seems especially inappropriate to use one in a blog update concerned with striving to create something unique, but the old adage "always put a little bit of yourself into your work" is one I agree with.
Personally, the trade off between creative freedom and creative focus is one I am acutely aware of whilst undertaking my current ongoing large scale portraiture project. It's great to be in charge but, as a result, I'm constantly battling with both creative freedom VS creative focus and the desire to create something unique VS the desire to create something that you actually like once it's finished.
Another common trade off comes from the motivation of creating the image and who it is being made for. I won’t get into this right now however, because we’re going off on a bit of a tangent already, and I intend to examine this in more depth in a later entry.
I guess you’ll be after some pictures now, right? Fair enough. I’ve worked with GamesTM magazine recently. Both of these commissions were published in this month’s issue, issue 95. Go and check it out in print if you haven’t seen it. If you’re a videogames fan at all, I would recommend buying the mag, too. It’s been an honour and a privilege to work with these guys; being able to photograph people I respect whilst working for people I respect is a wonderful thing.
The following images are a small selection from the two shoots I undertook recently. The first subject is Goichi Suda, or Suda51 as he is known. A games developer with an admirably fresh and, yes, very unique approach to videogame design. As a result, his games don’t feel like they are designed by committee and they celebrate the role of the auteur in what is becoming a progressively homogenised industry. His punk approach to design is admirable in my opinion, and is reflected in Grasshopper Manufacture’s slogan - “Punk’s Not Dead”.
(click images for large)
This shoot ended up being something of a high pressure affair. I don’t want to go too “behind the scenes” with the details (again, out of respect to the client) but, for reasons out of everyone’s control (with the exception of certain airlines), I was left with less than 20 minutes to set up, explain the theme of the shoot to Suda-san through his translator, and take the photos themselves. Thanks to extensive preparation (the importance of which I discuss in an earlier blog post, “Prepare.”), it took me 2 or 3 minutes to set up and get the test shots spot on with the desired exposure as opposed to spending 5 to 10 minutes fiddling with my settings and leaving me with less time to get the images. Suda-san himself was a brilliant subject, stunningly easy to direct and full of charisma. Once the nerves had settled down, I had a really great time in the company of someone I respect hugely.
The second subject is someone you’re more likely to have heard of. Shigeru Miyamoto is and has been a lead creative at Nintendo for many, many years. He is responsible for the Mario Brothers and Zelda games and has been an important figure at Nintendo for a very long time. He isn’t over in the UK very often, so we of course didn't want to miss the opportunity to photograph this great man.
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This shoot was also greatly exciting, but the nature of it was significantly different to the Suda51 shoot. We had been instructed to take any photos during the interview. There would be no opportunity for posed shots, so I would have to capture his character during the interview itself. The lighting was somewhat difficult to deal with at first; the room was dimly lit and hotel room lamps give off an unnatural orange glow that is awful for your colour balance settings. I felt that firing off a flashgun 80 times into the face of a deeply respected man of mature years might not be the most tactful way to photograph him during interview, especially seeing as putting him off his stride in an interview you might only secure twice a decade could have possibly rendered the journalist a little disgruntled. As a result, ISO had to be bumped up considerably.
On this front, when undertaking commissioned, commercial portraiture, it’s important to note that your client isn’t necessarily going to care as much about ISO settings as you do. The one thing they’re most worried about is having images to put in their magazine / on their website that capture the character of the subject and back up the tone of the article. It’s easy to get bogged down in image quality, and I for one am a stickler for it, but
you must remember that, before anything else, portraiture is about getting across the character of the subject.
A good example of this rule being ignored is the recent conservative party image of David Cameron gazing earnestly into the lens with the slogan "We can't go on like this", which was met with unanimous ridicule. As a piece of photography, this interested me at to why it failed to have the desired effect.
There are number of factors. First, the expression is wrong. It's far too aggressive; there's no need for Cameron to be maintaining that intense a stare into the lens; it's uncomfortable for the viewer. Second, there has been far too much post processing of the image. His skin is unnaturally smooth. This is the kind of pp you would see in a model shoot, not for a political campaign. The feeling we get from such pp is that if this man is hiding his face from us, then how can we trust him? this "fashion-y" tone is further reinforced by the high key, white background, which is typical of fashion shoots.
To clarify, I'm not intending to make these comments politically charged - I'm looking at it purely from a photography point of view. I'm also not attacking the photographer for the final image, as I have no idea how much creative freedom he or she was given, so that would be unfair and churlish.
Presuming I'd have been given enough creative freedom, here's how I would have shot that image; a high quality studio photo with a low key, black background and little to no post processing. I would also tone down the intensity of the stare considerably. There are ways to look honest without battering the viewer into submission. The low key background, apart from personal preference, would eliminate the fashion shoot comparisons. Seeing every unedited nook and cranny of the face would say to the viewer "I'm not hiding anything, here I am as I am, telling you this".
With portraiture that intends to evoke a feeling or communicate a message, especially at that level, it's extremely important to consider all elements. Expression, background, lighting and post processing must all be given careful thought.
I was going to leave that whole section out because the blog post is getting rather long (again) but I thought it would be an interesting contemporary case study. Now I'm going to throw to the closing paragraph by saying "I'm throwing to the closing paragraph now".
I'm throwing to the closing paragraph now.
I'm quite sure that everything I've written above has been written before in a variety of styles, many of them exhibiting a greater ability to write and a sounder grasp of grammar, but hopefully I've added enough of myself to make it worth writing, even if I’m the only one to get something out of it. Remember, there are no new ideas and, as if to prove it, “there are no new ideas” is another proverb that was said by someone else first a long time ago and has been said by many others since.
In short, shoot first, ask questions later.
N.B - As an added note of interest - I went back through and edited this entry and ended up removing six common phrases I wasn't even fully conscious of including (for example "chock-full" and "to name but a few", to name but a few). There are still two left in the closing paragraph, but I didn't want to change them just for the sake of being different.
For more images and info, be sure to visit
www.garethdutton.com
