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Glamour and the retouch

Marlene Dietrich by George Hurrell 1931.

With time to kill between jobs last week I went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the BP portrait award and also the Glamour of the Gods, which is a selection of photographs from the Kobal collection of hollywood portraits from the 1920's onwards. There's something wonderfully ethereal about photographs from this era, they have an almost powdery softness that always makes me think of a moth's wing. It's not just the soft-focus I don't think, it's the quality of light and the printing too. The new prints in the show, made from old negs, look immediately different, still gauzy but not so tactile. Photographers at this time were using magnificently massive cameras and alongside the portraits there are some fascinating pictures of the photographers in action.

Clarence Sinclair Bull photographing Clarke Gable and Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind, 1939
by Fred Parrish

There are images shot in natural light, or mostly natural light, like Elizabeth Taylor on the beach in a publicity still for "Suddenly last Summer", but most of the images are studio shots lit with incandescent lamps. In the shot above you can see the whole lighting rig more-or-less, I think the light on a stand close to us is the main light but there may be another out of frame, above Gable and Leigh is a spot which looks like it's acting as a kick light on their hair to separate them from the background, it maybe flooding onto the dress too. The little spot by the window over Gable's shoulder might both illuminate Leigh's face and highlight his jaw, or maybe it's another kick for his hair? I can't find the images this set-up produced to check what's doing what so it's a bit of a puzzle. This style of complex, dramatic lighting was exemplified by George Hurrell, who seemed to play fearlessly with shadows, often letting his subjects eyes fall into deep darkness or retouching harsh highlights to a near-metallic shine.

Since I'm always trying to improve my lighting I thought it would be interesting to try to replicate the '50's style portrait so I made some notes at the exhibition and looked through an old George Hurrell book for ideas. I didn't want to copy any image exactly so much as to get a feel for how the lights were positioned and where the shadows fell. I don't have models at hand so I used myself which also meant using a tethered set-up with my 5D and laptop so that I could sit and shoot simultaneously. I might blog about the tethering another time, it's cool to be able to do it. I shot using a monochrome picture style from the camera's menu but without the colour filter option.

For lights I used my Bowens kit but only the modeling lamps, set on proportional output so I could adjust them. I think that power-wise the modelling lamps are about the same as 1940's photographers would have had, close up they gave easily enough light for good exposures 5-6 stops down from full power. Using constant light meant that I could monitor the shadows and highlights and move my head accordingly. I had a main light with a small diffuser out front on one side and a silver reflector bouncing back to fill the shadow. Above me and over my shoulder there was a second light at the same power as my main light which gave a characteristic edge and some key highlights on my face.

I wasn't shy of retouching, since the look of those classic portraits is very worked. Hurrell would exaggerate his highlights using a soft graphite pencil on the negative plate, giving that alabaster shine and I kept dodging until I got somewhere close. I used a skin-retouching methodology that I've mentioned before (I think), it's from Joel Grimes' website and I like it because it allows a lot of control over how much detail you want and how much smoothing you apply. I also applied a film grain using the DxO labs FilmPack plugin and duotoned the final image for a slightly warm tone. Here it is:

Help, they airbrushed my face.

It looks wierdly like my dad. Looking again at the work from the show it's also a much more conservative image than most of them. In particular I've lit my eyes with a nice bright keylight whereas some of the most iconic images in the show leave deep shadows in the eyes. This composition is woefully pedestrian by comparison too, but in my defence, my model wasn't very cooperative. Lighting-wise I think it's nearly there, the Key, Bounce and Kick set-up delivers plenty of modelling. By the way you also get that contrasting gradation on the background where the lit side of the face is against the darker side by "feathering" the edge of the light so that it falls off, this works best when you light at right-angles to the camera view.

Here are some process pics that should enlarge if you click them:

Then I spied a bottle of theatrical blood on my desk (you never know when it might come in handy) and, well, this happened:

New Facebook profile picture perhaps?

Je suis un artiste

Returning from Paris Photo by the first Eurostar on sunday the awakening streets of the city were soon left behind as the train sliced into a misty french landscape illuminated by light as thin and pale as skimmed milk. Occasionally a tree or house rose out from the fog only to whip past the window and disappear. I thought it was the late night and early start that was having a similarly obscuring effect on my attempts to analyze what I might have learned from my first visit to the event but a good night's sleep later I still seem to be staring into a fog trying to work out what I now know about the art-photography world.

Paris Photo is a collection of exhibitions and a sort of photography gallery trade-show. The exhibitions are simple enough and worth the event in themselves, often showing in the many palais around the Seine or along the more elegant boulevards. There were many that I would have liked to see and those I did see (Edgar Martins, Larry Clark, Steidl, Anonymes) were excellent. The trade-show seemed more complicated, at least for photographers, because for many of us it's a glimpse into a world which is seductively unavaliable. A world that promises great rewards to a few, selected by criteria which are unwritten, unspoken, unknown, inconstant and possibly unhinged. Still, there seemed to be plenty of photographers at Paris Photo who, like me, were walking around the 120 or so stands asking two questions over and over: where is the door to this world and how do I open it?

It's not just that I would like to have my work sell for £10,000. It's not just that I would like the creative freedom to work on any project that interested me. It's not just that I would like to be taken seriously, you know, as an artist. It is all these things that make the art world look like a nice place to go.

So here's what I think I've learned from Paris Photo:

1. Gallery's don't sell images, they sell artists.
2. A photograph becomes a work of art by a combination of factors: The intention of the photographer, the contention of the gallery and the confirmation of the buyer.
3. Gallery's call inkjet prints "pigment" prints.
4. If in doubt: print it big.

Any cynicism I feel about the art market does not prevent me from recognizing that I saw some great works in Paris. Over and above the confusing machinations of a scene that clearly didn't want to tell me much, there were images that clearly did. I think that's got to be a good sign.

Steve McCurry: Reflections

Watch in HD here.

Steve McCurry's images are both iconic and accessible but it's possible that some of their strength has been diminished by their familiarity. To see some of them afresh is to rediscover them as photographs rather than calendars, postcards or posters. In this short film he discusses some of the images on show in a retrospective at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Of his most famous image, the Afghan girl, he tellingly remarks: "It's better to be known for one great picture than not to be known at all." In fact there is a wealth of great pictures in McCurry's archive, which spans the globe and the last 30 years.

Melon Rouge Photo Fringe

Photographers are invited to submit work with an Asian theme to the Melon Rouge Photo Fringe, which takes place from Nov 28th - Dec 5th in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Further details here. Good luck.

Embracing uncertainties

Davey Savage Junior. © David Gillanders

In the fascinating documentary about her work,What Remains, Sally Mann talks about the idiosyncratic and temperamental nature of wet plate photography and the impact of "technical imperfections" on her work.

"I've taken some pictures in the past that were miraculously transformed by some hand other than my own, and made a better image. And I really welcome those interventions."

The exhibition of her work currently showing at The Photographers' Gallery in London seems to show an increasingly collaborative relationship between Mann and what she calls her "Angel of uncertainty". The earliest work in the show comes from Immediate Family, the work that brought Mann to wide attention, partly because of a fuss about her kids being naked in the photographs, but mostly, and rightly, because of the intensity and power of her images. These images are classic and studied, perhaps a bit contrived but they do communicate something about the relationship between a mum and her kids, in particular at the time those kids are growing more apart, more adult, more strange. It sometimes looks like Mann is trying to work out who her kids are becoming, rather than trying to preserve them in childhood, which is perhaps what a lot of pictures of children try to achieve.

There aren't many technical imperfections in this work, shot I'm guessing with a 5X4 or similar, but there are signs that Mann isn't inhibited by limiting aesthetic conventions. My favorite image in this selection is divided diagonally between an area of deep shadow in which two figures loom and an area of creamy-bright light in which a girls stands tip-toed on a table. Between the under-exposed gloom and the over-exposed glare there is no middle ground, no "correct" exposure, it would probably get one of those helpful stickers labs used to put on wonky prints, but rather than trying to fight the light to produce an image that flattens the extreme difference in exposure, Mann has made an image which ignores a sterile technical convention and is utterly magical as a result.

The rest of the images in the show are all made using the wet-plate collodion process and bear the marks of dust and tears in the emulsion and who knows what else. These images: landscapes, images of corpses in a forensic research facility and portraits of her now-adult children are more and more like paintings. In places the tones seem to flow over the image, often the photo is a combination of areas of highly detailed work and rough expressionistic shapes. The process she has chosen seems to allow Mann to prepare a canvas for chance to paint on.

Also in What Remains she says "I'm so worried that I'm going to perfect this [collodion] technique someday". By perfecting the technique she would certainly squeeze out that element of chance, leaving something much less alive, much less magical. Perhaps it's a counterweight to the way large format photography forces you to be formal, static and methodical - all the improvisation comes after the shutter has closed.

A day after seeing the Sally Mann exhibition I got a coincidentally related email from David Gillanders. David has been experimenting with this same collodion process recently and has started to blog about his experiences including a video showing his awesome mobile darkroom built in a van. This seems like a change of pace for someone whose unflinching reportage work has won many awards and a place on the World Press Photo Masterclass but in David's pictures you can also see a willingness to allow chance to play a role, maybe a background in press photography makes this a necessity? The images that David has made already are stunningly beautiful (see above) and I'm looking forward to seeing and reading more as his blog progresses.

Last week I also went to see the BP Portrait award and saw some inspiring work but also some strangely irritating photo-realist paintings. In fact some were more than photo-realist, seeming to be exact reproductions of photographs in paint, complete with out-of-focus backgrounds and flare. It was a strange contrast to Mann's work to see painstakingly controlled and technically precise images that offer, for me, absolutely no emotional resonance.

Perpignan survival guide

Dominick Tyler - Fag Ends

Perpignan week is just around the corner, offering its usual intoxicating blend of awkward portfolio moments (is a urinal an inappropriate place for a viewing?), awkward badge-reading moments (Q: What does a black stripe mean this year? A: My agency just died) and, erm, intoxication. Somehow, despite the regular sponsorship crises and constant mutterings about how much more civilized Arles is, Perpignan keeps drawing us back, year after year.

Except this year I'm not going, for a number of reasons to do with family commitments, needing to get some work done and all that but also (and to be honest this is probably the main reason) because I don't like it. And I know we all say that sometimes and then we go and we have a great time, and I have gone, and I have had a great time but I also think I wouldn't mind never going again. It's a Perpignan paradox of attraction and revulsion, an annual gathering of otherwise solitary animals at an overcrowded water-hole to fight for Alpha status and mating (i.e. syndication) rights before limping back to their lonely hunting grounds to lick their wounds and re-do their portfolios. So for this year at least I declare myself out of the photographic gene pool, but for those of you who feel the thrum of hot, heavy blood in your veins and taste the bitter, metal tang of adrenalin as you prepare yourselves, especially if for the first time, to enter the arena, I would like to humbly offer a few tips on how to survive, if not enjoy, the experience.

1. Take a very small portfolio, or better yet none at all: It's an often observed but rarely acted-upon fact that Perpignan must be one of the worst environments to show work. The frenetic pace and awesome quantities of images will take their toll on the most experienced picture editor and presenting a massive portfolio is like dishing up a whole lasagna to someone in the middle of a 12 course banquet. Better to take a small, perfectly formed taste of your work or a single story you want to sell. Make your work the sharp sorbet that clears their palate before they have to wade back into the stodge and you are more likely to be remembered and appreciated. You might reasonably decide not to show anything and use the opportunity to gather contacts to follow up on later, when your work will have a better chance of getting through. You'll have more time to look at the exhibitions too.

2. You won't need all your camera kit: It might seem like carrying 20kg of gear around makes you appear "ready for anything" but, curiously, it often gives the opposite impression.

3. Try to eat well: I'm always mystified by how crap my diet becomes in Perpignan, this is still France for ****'s sake and yet here is another limp sandwich-jambon-fromage and god-awful coffee. It's something to do with the timing of things I think, with the projections cutting into good eating hours in the evenings and the good lunch places packed out. I have tended to choose food and good conversation over photography in the evenings in recent years and as a result I've had a much more productive time. Last year I also found a really good pizza place just over the river from La Poste, got a takeaway and took it into the one evening projection I saw (the Gendarmes on the gate took a couple of slices as "payage" but hey). Also, it's peach season so get your five-a-day, your mum would agree.

4. Don't expect too much: If the most that comes out of it is some inspiration from other works, getting to see a few editors' faces and building up your contacts that's probably pretty good going.

5. Beware the agencies: In recent years the agencies have been chucking around syndication contracts like confetti because, I guess, quantity of images is now almost as important as quality of images. There were a lot of shiny eyed graduates last year signing up as though their dreams had been answered but I wonder whether the deals they got really delivered what they were expecting. If it's a good deal it will still be a good deal the week after the excitement when you've had a chance to study it.

6. Don't order a Negroni at La Poste: I did, it cost €12.

Please add your own tips by commenting.

Ian Parry Scholarship 2009

Ed Ou - From the series "Under a Nuclear Cloud"

The finalists and winners of this year's Ian Parry Scholarship have been announced and will be on show at the Getty Images Gallery from August 5th. The scholarship, which is open to those studying photography full-time and anyone under 24 years of age, regularly brings great new talents to a wider audience. If you're eligible you should definitely consider applying next year.

Still human, still here.

Abbie Trayler-Smith - Boni

Host Gallery in London is exhibiting a project by Abbie Trayler-Smith called "Still human, still here" that portrays the lives of rejected asylum seekers in the UK. I know Abbie really well, she's been a friend since we worked on a student newspaper together. She honed her considerable photographic skills at the Telegraph where she became one of their busiest photographers, regularly traveling to hot-spots and disaster areas and every time returning with powerful images.

After eight years at the Telegraph she courageously decided to move on and has recently found a new home at Panos Pictures. Like all great photographers, she is her own worst critic so she will hate me pouring on the compliments but having seen this latest project develop, almost from the start, I'm struck again by her ability to make wonderful images, communicating complex stories with simple honesty.

I've asked Abbie to blog about her experiences working on the project and putting the show together so hopefully she will.