The Online Photographer

K4kafka asked, in the Comments: "Over the years you’ve tested many cameras, lenses, and shooting genres. Do you now consider yourself a 'landscape photographer'?"

My answer is "it's what's available." I love photographing kids, but there are no kids in my everyday life, and although I got along well with kids in my younger days, I can't claim I do now. My "best thing" is portraits (if you ask me, anyway), but people take their own portraits with their phones now—I literally can't give portraits away for free, sometimes. I've asked three or four people recently if they would pose for a portrait, and they say yes and take my card but then don't get back to me. ("You know what they say: Oh well.")

I did do a portrait this past week, and it was fun to do. I photographed Kerry G., a friend I met on a dating site and went out with a number of times a number of years ago. She needs the picture for a website associated with a new job.

Kerry Graff. This is the one I liked, not the one Kerry liked.
Fuji X-T1, 56mm ƒ/1.2.

When I do a portrait, it's "personality not perfection." I like natural-looking pictures. I don't use a makeup person or a stylist, not that there's anything wrong with that. I don't make all sorts of changes in Photoshop—enhancing skin, enlarging eyes, etc. I work in natural light, and we try different spots, different light, sometimes different clothes (not this time), and I have people re-do their hair several times during the shoot. I want to give people a variety of looks in the proofs. It usually takes about an hour, and sometimes as long as two or three. I especially don't like it when they dislike something about the setup and it's in every shot.

That's the Allison R. rule. Allison was a willowy beauty with a great mass of big blonde hair, and she claimed that she liked her hair to be tousled and unkempt, so she didn't want to brush it, and she didn't use a brush through the whole session. We spent hours shooting nine rolls of 35mm film, an all-time record for me for a portrait...and, you guessed it, she didn't like her hair in any of them, thanks to one unruly strand that stuck out in all 300+ shots. That was before Photoshop, when you were pretty much stuck with what you got on film. Ever since then, I've asked women—men too, actually—to check their hair several times during a session. It doesn't have to be perfect, just different. Just in case.

I was going to give Kerry four proofs, but mostly we shot without her glasses on, and she ordinarily wears glasses. So at the last minute I included what I thought was the best glasses-on exposure. I had already picked my favorite frame by that time (the one above), and it was a glasses-off shot. Well, you guessed it again—she thought the shot with her glasses on was far and away the best one of the five. Good thing I included it!

I don't mind that, of course. She needs a particular look 'n' feel—it's a professional portrait, and she has a good idea of what she needs the picture to convey. She's also familiar with others doctors' portraits. So it's her choice.

Well, except here on TOP! Here, I get my way.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Jack Mac: "You definitely are a portrait guy. I still use one of your shots of me taken when we were shooting in an abandoned building in Milwaukee. It’s even better with age, since it makes me look ten years younger. Nowadays I prefer to not show people their photos for ten years, so that they can exclaim, 'You captured me perfectly!'"

Mike replies: One of the things Kerry and I discussed when we were talking about the edits of her chosen shot is that she knows she wants to use it for the next ten years.  :-)