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.
A wavy fence in High Park really caught my eye, and I had to work it into a portrait!
Today’s image is the final one from my recent photo shoot with Shreeti. The first post featured a colour digital image. The second was a negative scan from an instant print. Today, traditional black and white film. I feel each different technology captured something different from the shoot. For me, black and white does the best job of capturing the detail of the lovely clothing worn by Shreeti.
(Mamiya 645 Pro TL, Ilford Delta 400, negative scanned and post processed with Nik Efex pro)
This is my second hand-tinted print where the colours are somewhat surrealistic. It is model Keira, taken in Kensington Market, where the colours are already a bit surrealistic, to my eye.
Toronto is not know for vintage architecture, thanks in part to a lot of bad development decisions over the years. Much of the downtown core looks rather generic. I was walking downtown the other day, and came upon a dark, gloomy alleyway, aand it seemed to take me back a century or more.
It has been a productive weekend for hand-tinted portraits. Today’ image features Jinxy, an alternative model with a unique and vibrant esthetic.
In my last couple of shoots, I have made a point of using different cameras and technologies at the same shoot, and I am glad I did so — I love the different kind of results I get. As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here is another image of Shreeti, but instead of a high resolution digital image, today’s image is a scan of an instant print (using Fuji FP3000B film in a Polaroid Model 455 Land Camera). Shreet’s look is timeless, and I think the vintage appearance of this print technique captures this, while still retaining her thoroughly modern sensibility.
Last night I had a great photo shoot with Shreeti, a Toronto model of Nepalese background. She brought a number of beautiful Nepalese outfits. I shot film (colour and black and white), some instant black and white with my Polaroid, and some digitals, one of which is today’s image.
I was truck by the intricacies of the outfits, and the eye for detail that Shreeti had for posing and arranging the outfits; she definitely made them sing!
Today’s image was created on Kodak Portra 400 colour negative film using my Rolleicord IIIa camera, which is a Twin Lens Reflex camera. Normally the term twin lens reflex refers to the fact that the camera has two lens — a viewing lens, and a “taking” lens directly below the viewing lens. With this camera though, twin lens for me could refer to the large difference in image sharpness when shot with the taking lens wide open (at f3.5) compared to stopped down to a smaller aperture, say f8 or f11. Stopped down, the lens (a Schneider Kreuznach Xenar) is reasonably sharp. Wide open though, I get a softness that I just love. It is great for portraits, such as this one of Emily.
This is another image with a theme about being conflicted about religion. It didn’t pop out when I was shooting, but when I looked at the image later, I couldn’t help but see baleful eyes, angry eyebrows, and a gaping maw, ready to devour. It reminds me of how fear has been an essential part of almost all religions since the dawn of humanity, with the message being worship me or die.
My Third Eye 