The two images here represent two beginnings.
The image from 1968 in black and white was taken with a Nikon F using
Tri-X and an 85mm mild portrait lense. I was then 22 and a summer
photographic intern on the Louisville, KY Courier-Journal,
regularly then winning Pulitzer
prizes in reporting and photography and ranking amongst the top ten
newspapers in the country as
rated by the Columbia School of Journalism . I'd been given a
real gift,
the assignment to do a photo essay of the riverfront business area,
which included the old Haymarket district, the real gritty run-down
commercial market for farm produce. Such markets are long gone
now, but before the mid-1900s every city had them, and they weren't all
that different from their bazaar and souk counterparts in Europe and
points east.
Taking pictures to capture the life and spirit of a person takes balls:
you really have to be right on top of them so that they fill the
camera with their life. I didn't know that, but I was about to
find out. A hefty fireplug of a woman was setting up her stall,
right behind me, and someone had called her a wino. She snapped
around with fire in her eye and roasted the fellow that had said
that...and a third person, right at my side, said, 'Turn around, take
her picture'. I was flustered both by him and the woman's ire,
but he insisted, so I turned around, right on top of the woman...and
took this shot more or less blind, on reflexes. When the
intensity of the moment is strong enough, it's like a rushing blaze and
you really don't know what you're doing, you just run on
reflexes. And that was my first great portrait shot, with it and
the lesson (Get Up Close and Fill. The. Frame.), a gift from the guy
who
insisted I Take The Picture.
"If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough". —Robert Capa, the legendary 20th century war photojounalist
Here's an image, an early one with my
first
good
digital camera, the Canon 5DMkII. It has autofocus that works
pretty well (no small thing), high resolution (for a digital camera)
and great lenses. This image was shot with that same focal length, an
85mm mild portrait telephoto, but it works
beautifully in low light (I
never
use flash) with an ultra bright F1.2 opening. I am standing in
total darkness and shooting two women, also in the darkness outside,
but
lit by light spilling from inside....and the result is gorgeous
lighting like Vermeer. Even so, I must slow the shutter speed
down a lot to get enough light and so the image is slightly blurred.
Since then, my portraiture made strides...
click, wait, then click or double click again to zoon in on any image
below...you'll be amazing by the clarity and resolution
for more, see my
portraiture web page