“Hurry Up and Wait” is an unavoidable part of the theatre rehearsal process. I made this image at the first dress rehearsal for It’s a Wonderful Life the other night.
Category: Available Light
Eyes
On the subway to work this morning, the intensity of this man’s expression caught my attention; he spent the whole time whispering to himself under his breath.
Silver Lining
It was a very grey, very dull day yesterday, but all that meant for me was that the light coming through the window for a shoot with model “K” was fantastic. I shot with three cameras: my Mamiya Universal Press (with Polaroid instant back), my Mamiya RZ67 medium format, and a few on my Nikon D90 DSLR. The image below is one of the instant pictures taken with the Universal Press.
Craft
Earlier this week I shot the final rehearsal for Mambo Italiano, a funny, touching and moving play being put on by Alexander Showcase Theatre. If you are on Facebook, you can see some of the pictures I took here. This is an amazing show, and well worth seeing! Today’s picture is one I took before the show began, of cast member Antonio Olivito stretching and warming up. I had the privilege of working with Antonio earlier this year in Man of La Mancha: he is an interesting mix of manic, spontaneous energy and a serious approach to the art and craft of theatre, and I’d like to think I captured that in this image.
Reality
In a lot of ways this image is not realistic: it is not in colour, it is not especially sharp, it is dark and grainy. But for early morning on the bus in November, it is extremely realistic.
Connection
I took this image on the subway on a trip downtown this afternoon. I was struck by the fact that they were sharing music via one headphone jack, but apart from that they were both in their own worlds: no words, glances etc. were exchanged until it was time to get off the train. Mysterious and intriguing!
Fatigue
Five days a week I am on the TTC, early. The image today was taken this morning on the Kipling bus, at about 6:50 a.m. You haven’t seen fatigue until you see transit riders at this time of day, and today was no exception.
Expression part 2
Another image of Iryna, this time shot on film, I asked Iryna to show some sadness, and I described a story for her to place herself into. It was amazing how fast she became the character in the sad story; she was feeling the emotion. There is no faking for this kind of expression.
(Mamiya 645 Pro TL, 80mm f2.8 lens, Tri-x @ E.I. 800 developed in Diafine 3+3, negative scanned and post processed using NIK software)
Expression
Yesterday I had an amazing shoot with a young model named Iryna in High Park. It was a glorious day, very welcome after a spate of weather-related cancellations! Most of the shoot was film (until I ran out! I thought I had more with me than I did), so I had to shoot a few digital, so my first post on this shoot will be a digital image, as the first batch of negatives go through their final rinse in my darkroom. I was amazed at Iryna’s ability to create amazing expressions: beautiful, subtle, and entirely believable, over and over again. She instinctively understands that successful modeling is as much about acting and story as it is about posture and pose.
From a Distance
I think I’ve mentioned before how so much of my portrait work is close-up; I am addicted to the biography (indeed the landscape) that is the human face. I have to force myself to pull back ever now and then, and let more of the setting into the story, or even become the story, as I think it does in this image of model Theresa in High Park.
My Third Eye 