Head Shot

 I am always looking for new photographic challenges. Sometimes it is some grandiose plan, but often it is something a little smaller.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from my day job saying our company ID cards would be replaced and we would need a new headshot.

My last ID photo was taken about 15 years ago, where as a group, we were marched down to an office, where a professional photographer took our corporate photos. That has been my company image since then. I always say that corporate photos are a bit like a reverse Dorian Grey. Instead of your portrait growing older as you stay youthful, th opposite happens. I have been in meetings where our images are displayed and it takes me ages to work out the youthful image on the screen is in fact the elderly person sitting next to me. 

Anyway that image has represented me for all those years, but even after it was taken I hated it. Apart from a face that looked nothing like me, I made the mistake of having my shirt open at the collar, a look that was dated even then.

So the opportunity to update that image was welcome. However gone were the days of paying someone to take my image, pretty well anyone with a phone can now generate one, and I am sure that would be the approach most would take.

But I'm a photographer dammit. The easy way is not an option, and if I was going to get an image of myself, it was going to be the best damn one I could make.

Doing Head

Portrait photography generally is not my thing. It just requires too much dedicated space and equipment and I have not got the spave. 

Then there is getting the best out of your subject. This requires you conjoling and instructing, something I am not really comfortable with. 

However in this case the subject would be me, so I felt I could handle it.

My 1st call was inevitable that tutorial space called YouTube. I wanted to know two things. Firstly, the optimum lighting setup and secondly, the best way to pose to get the most flattering shot. Fortunately, there are loads of videos on this sort of thing, however as I watched them I realised there were a number of issues

Most portrait photographers have a dedicated area, to allow the setup of the various lights and other apparatus. The other issue were most of the eaxmples were taking pictures of 20 something models, which to be honest, getting a decent image was not a challenge. Taking an image of 60 year old bloke would require a lot more effort. 

Still, I got the idea. Basically, I needed at white background and at least two light sources. One to illuminate my face, and another to illuminate the background to make it white. I also needed a reflector to ensure that both sides of the face were evenly illuminated (A third light would of been better here, but two lights was easier)

Having a Flash

Pros don't have to de-construct their living quarters to take an image

Professional photographers use speedlights, or main powered flashes. These are powerful lighst with infinite flashes. I have considered purchasing a few over the years, but they are expensive and in truth I just would just never use them. Instead, I had a number of flashes. 2 cheapo Newer flashes, and two better Godox models. My best one was a Godox T430, which is a great piece of kit. Unfortunately, some years ago I had dropped it on its Hotshoe mount, and bent a pin, so it will not now fire from the camera. However fortunately I have a wireless trigger, that will trigger that plus my smaller T440 Godox flash. 

The next question was the set up. I have a number of cheap reflector umbrella's so I could mount the larger flash on a stand, reflected from a umbrella to diffuse the light. I also had a large white cloth that I could hang as a backdrop. It was a bit creased, but ironing it would have been a pain, so I hoped as long as I kept the depth of field quite shallow, the creases would not show up. I also had a large white reflector which I hung opposite the main flash.

To illuminate the backdrop, I wanted to mount another flash behind me. However I could only locate one flash pole mount for the umbrella poles. In the end I resorted to an old flash hoder with a tripod mount on an old tripod.

Finally with the flashes mounted, and the backdrop up I was ready to begin. I decided to use my 85mm Viltrox lens since it was sharp and would hopefully provide the separation between subject and backdrop as long as the aperture was wide enough (About F5.6). 

In a professional studio, they have loads of space to put there kit around and place their camera lens. In my house the options were more limited.

The best place would be the living room, but that would mean kicking the family out and the dining has a large table. So the master bedroom is the only space large enough. However I had to work around the double bed, plus various other furniture and clobber, but there was just enough room to set the reflector, background and have enough seperation between my camera and subject. My other major problem was the room light which hung too low. This was fixed by the use gaffer tape to stick it to the ceiling. I am pretty sure David Bailey never had thesev issues.

Lone Worker

I then needed to set the lighting correctly. I needed enough light to illuminate my face, but not blow out the highlights. To do this I took a number of test shots using a self timer . 

To get the lighting correct it took a lot of repositioning of the elements, partly because I did not understand the power settings on the flashes which were by default to low. However with careful positioning of both the flash light, the power and also setting the camera ISO and aperture, I was finally ready.

Or so I thought, because just when I was ready, the backlight flash stopped working. I replaced the batteries, but nothing worked so i had to find an alternative and got one my cheaper Newer flashes. This could not be wirelessly triggered, but could be slaved to the other flash light.

My next problem was actually taking the photo. Like I said up to here I had been using a self-timer, but I needed another set of eyes to tell me if my pose was good and line the camera up. I therefore called on my wifes help

Family Affair

This is where my yougest daughter got involved. She declared my eyebrows as disaster and set about manicuring them. She also decided the tie I was going to use, just would not do. 

So suitably bedecked we were ready. Howerver I had to minstruct my wife on how to position the tripod and press the camera shutter, which took much longer thaty I thought it would, not helped by my dog deciding to get in on the act. 

In the end my ideas of playing around with various poses went out of the window. So my wife took 3 or 4 shots and checking them I thought...good enough.

Final touches

Despite the final image not being too bad (IMHO), there were still a few issues. I had a spot on my forehead that was easily removed in post. Despite being clean shaven that morning, my stubble was starting to show. That took a little bit more effort to hide.

The biggest problem however was the difference in illumination on both sides of my face.This I had to correct using a mask and a curves adjustment

So after 3 hours vof work I was ready

Conclusion 

So was it worth it? The answer is yes and no. For the purpose of a photo that will end up on a 3-inch piece of plastic that most will never look at, it was a little overkill. I did however learn a lot about my flashes, setting up a lighting rig and the challenges of portraiture 

And I alos achieved my task. OK the image still shows some old bloke, not some gorgeous subermodel, but it is a photo I can be proud of. 

So in a few weeks’ time, the image will adorn my new pass, and it will become my corporate identity, and I can take pride that it is all my own work...

The dog checking up on his best side

Somee Old bloke....

P.S

The other flash mysteriously started working later that evening, and I have no idea why

 

Christmas Dad

The Guardian newspaper published an article recently about the Christmas Dad and the impossibility of buying presents for them. Basically, they are men who have achieved a point in life where they have everything they need. I have realised that I am indeed in that category. I am in the fortunate position to be debt-free, reasonably well paid, and every year I am a nightmare to buy presents for. 

Around November, my wife always starts asking for a Christmas present list, and after much soul-searching, the best I can ever come up with is books. 

Not that I need more books. I have a birthday late in the year, and again I ask for books, which I might be lucky to have completed any of them by Christmas. In fact, I calculated that I have probably enough unread books to keep me going for an entire year of continuous reading.  However, any other present would be too expensive or too complicated to explain, and the fact is, if I had really needed it, I probably would have already bought it. 

So what do you get for the person who has everything? 

Everything but time itself

The weird thing about growing older is that life never turns out as you expect. 

I had assumed, as I move into my 7th decade, that I would have more time to spend on hobbies, but the truth is, as you grow older, you instead accumulate responsibilities, which in turn eat into your so-called "free" time. 

I have around the house, multiple half-baked projects that I never really get a full run-up to complete. In my youth, I would spend weeks doing these sorts of things, but now I am lucky to spend a day a month. 

So what do you get for the person who has everything?  The answer is time.

 My wife is always telling me I need to take my holiday earlier. The problem is, I always feel guilty in doing things on my own. I love both my wife and family, and I want to spend time with them, but when I do, I constantly want to go and do things on my own terms. 

So with that in mind, I decided to take a "me" day and go to London to see a photography related exhibition and with a bit of luck a little photography

The 1st question was which one? 

My first thought was the Victoria and Albert. 

I love the V&A. It is like the  the world's biggest and best attic, but photography is just an addendum on top of everything else and gets subsumed into the huge morass of objects.

I there decided instead to go to the National Portrait Gallery(NPG) which despite going to London many times, I had never visited.

 It was also hosting the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize, so it seemed as good as anywhere.

National Portraits

The NPG is hidden behind the larger and more prestigious National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, and as such gets far less footfall. 

The NPG is in itself a bit of an anachronism. I mean, why have a gallery based on one genre? After all, we don't have a National Landscape gallery or a National Still Life gallery. The other thing which differentiates it from all the plethora of other galleries in London is that it is the one gallery in which photography and painting are held in the same value and displayed equally. So next to a Gainsborough could be a Bailey. 

 

Also, all the pictures shown represent people, living or dead, who had desires, prejudices and ideas just like those viewing them. The test of a great portrait is how well the character of the subject is expressed to the viewer.

In this regard, the skill of a portrait photographer needs to exceed that of a portrait painter, since while the latter can modify their image to show the character of the subject, a photographer is limited to only what they see in the studio at the time.

I will admit that I am very poor at taking photographic portraits. 

Here I am not alone. In a recent club competition, the judge bemoaned the lack of good landscape photographs entered in the end-of-year show. I am willing to bet, however, that the represention of portrait photography is even worse. 

What is considered portraits in these sorts of competitions can be split between glamour photography, where a model is paid for a pack of paparazzi wannabees to take shots or portrait montages consisting of heavily HDR'd black and white images showing sentimental story lines that are laid on so thickly it would make a pre-Raphaelite brotherhood painter blush with embarrassment.

However, neither of these are true portrait photography. They are too artificial, contrived. A good portrait has to bare the soul of the sitter and provide some measure of the person's life or character to the viewer. 

Looking at some of the images in the portrait prize exhibition made me realise why few portraits do well in club competitions. The view of a portrait's worth is very much driven by the viewer's experiences and prejudices. How you engage with the image is based on so many individual aspects that no two people will view the same image in the same way

For example, in the portrait prize exhibition, I was not particularly drawn to the winning photos. The one that stood out for me was this one.

If I entered this as a club competition entry, the judge would complain about the arm across the image, the cluttered background, and the bright spot in the top left. It fails to meet the standards that what we are taught in clubs defines a good photo. 

However, having teenage daughters myself, I recognise the look on the subject's face. It is one I have been subjected to many times.  It is a combination of gained confidence, the arrogance of knowing they know best, combined with the "I am only allowing this image to be taken under duress" look. 

However, to anyone who has not tried to photograph similar people, it would not have the same resonance.

Selfies

I greatly enjoyed the NGP. Again, a relatively unique aspect of the museum is that the images tend to be in chronological order, with the earlier portraits on the upper floor. You can therefore track the progression of the portrait from a pure propaganda device where images stood in for the individual presence, such as the Tudor images of kings and queens, to more personal representations of self. 

Close to where I live, we have a building purported to be the oldest continuous working photographic studio in the world, W.W.Winter. As well as a working studio, it has an excellent museum attached, with many thousands of plates being restored. The NGP brought it to mind with its exhibition of small personal photos from the 1800s, some famous, but many unnamed

 

It always reminds me how incredible the portrait photograph must have been when they first became available. Before photography, pretty much everyone in the world had no way to refer back to how they looked as a child. At the opposite end, unless you were very wealthy, no one had images of what their relatives and ancestors looked like. I have a plethora of both images from my family, and that ability to place an image onto a name, even of those I never met, is incredibly valuable to me and connects me with my ancestors, as I hope my images will connect me to mine.

However, one portrait image type has become linked to the modern age, and that is the selfie. In fact, its history goes back a long way, with the first being recorded in 1839, and I'm willing to bet there are older ones which did not survive, since the desire to record our presence is a strong instinct.

Since I finished at the gallery relatively early, I left with what else to do with my day. I always come out enthused by such exhibitions, and therefore decided to try and take some images in Trafalgar Square amongst the Christmas tourists and market.

 

I wasn't really sure what to take, but I watched all tourists taking selfies, I decided to take images of people recording themselves. One of the things about London that I always take a little getting used to is that people rarely take notice of other people, even those pointing cameras at them. This can make London quite a lonely place, but for street photography, it is great, because you are unlikely to get the aggression found in smaller places

The classic single selfie

The group shop

The setup

The multiple selfie

The watcher

The mum selfie

The teenager selfie

 

The family selfie

 

Big in Japan

The Photographers Gallery, lurking off Oxford Street, London

 

 

After the square and feeding myself on a traditional German bratwurst served by an Indian with a London accent, I was not really sure what to do with myself. I decided to head for Oxford Street, in the classic faith over experience moment that I could do some late Christmas shopping. As I perused the satnav, I noticed I would be passing by the Photographers Gallery. This is the only really true photographic gallery in central London, so it seemed the perfect place to head for.

 

The gallery had an exhibition by a Japanese photographer, Daido Moriyama. In many ways, it was very much the antithesis of the NPG, with stark, heavily contrasted, black and white images, with no clear link or subject. Many of the images were brutal of people like sex workers and were often uncomfortable viewing, and again were the direct opposite of club photography, where the desire seems mainly to create images with the minimum of conflict.

 

Daido purpose seems to be an attempt to deconstruct photography to an almost minimalist state. Although unsettling, I greatly enjoyed the exhibition. I am planning to go to Japan in 2024, and I was fascinated that, although native Japanese, Daido seem to take the same fascination in Japanese idiosyncrasies that I do. It felt like a very western view of Japanese culture.      

 

 

You are not in camera club land any more

All your analog needs...

Finally..

So, how was my Christmas present?

I really enjoyed the NGP, but more importantly, I enjoyed the opportunity of taking it at my own pace. Even more so, the photographer's gallery. I would not inflict this on my family, but I savoured the opportunity to peruse at my leisure

The more important question was what did I come out of it? Well, a better appreciation of the art of the portrait, some nice street photographs and a new view of Japan.

More critically, I came away with a stronger realisation that you take photographs for yourself. Whether someone else likes them is a bonus; the most important thing is that you yourself know you did the best job you could

I'll leave you with a few more images that I took that day

Happy Christmas 2023 

 

 

The eyes have it. King Charles III and Malala Yousafzai together

Marge Wallis Simpson

Sara Forbes Bonetta

An example of how a photograph can misrepresent a character. This man could be anyone's grandad, but was responsible for multiple massacres in the West Indies

Murderous sociopaths - the very definition of Christmas

The last supper