The designer, Tara St. James.
photo: Tara St. James, NYC, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
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Hi,
First I would like to say that I really appreciate your work and look forward to your blog posts. As another poster said your images are a welcome reprieve to the superlit, over-saturated, high-pass phase of portraiture happening now.
I do have a question regarding your approach to portraiture or at least your editing. What is your aim when tasked to do a portrait of someone? I am assuming it’s multi-fold, with perhaps a specific request being made by the client. But for you personally – what are you after? Do you know ahead of time or is each sitter different and thus creating their own flow of thoughts in your head. I ask these questions because of the portrait in this post and the one previous. Both are gazing out of the the frame, seemingly lost in their own thoughts. The architect seems to be caught in some mid-emotion/thought/speech? So both these images come more of as outtakes than intentional portraiture. The sitter is not “selling” themselves. What is always interesting and perhaps a better approach to portraiture in general.
-Sherman
Comment by Sherman — October 14, 2009 @ 4:10 pm
Sherman, I get a lot of autonomy on these sort of portraits. There may be discussion as to ideas the magazine has in mind beforehand, but not as much as you’d think. They’re asking me to do it b/c of the way I shoot, and they expect me to make the final call to get the picture I think is best.
With that, I go into portraits with a pretty specific idea of what I want to do, or if not idea, emotion, narrative, etc. I’m always open and willing to adapt for a better picture, to take advantage of, and not fight, the variables that come into play, the biggest being the personality of the sitter, but there’s still most certainly a picture in my head, sometimes exact, sometimes more vague, and I’ll go after it however I can. The above portrait was very casual, and Tara and I were in conversation and literally eating at a diner with my assistant, and while we all talked, when I saw moments begin to unfold that interested me, I’d raise the camera and, click. I also have a sort of bank of ideas in my head at any given time, as most photographers do, and sometimes a situation lines up with one of those ongoing thoughts, and that’s what took place when shooting the architect, Trattie. We’d been inside her apt shooting, somewhat uninspired, then when it started to rain and get windy, I thought it was a great opportunity to go to the roof and try to do something inspired by the emotion and aesthetic of a few old French movies I’m always returning to.
For me, pictures like these can not be accidents. With the time you usually get to take them, the strong personalities on set, and the knowledge that a professional relationship rides on their success, I wouldn’t ever depend on chance.
Hope that helps answer your question. Just remember that everyone works differently, and that while there’s certainly wrong ways, there’s also really no right way, so the best thing to do is simply make the pictures you have floating around in your head.
Comment by admin — October 14, 2009 @ 5:10 pm
“While there’s certainly wrong ways, there’s also really no right way.” You are right about that Greame
Comment by Scott Mitchell — October 15, 2009 @ 7:13 pm