Lighting for fashion photography

[Tenolian Bell]

The high key fashion stuff is too bland for me. Part of is natural lighting and its partly huge soft sources, I like more of a challenge.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Me too. It just looks like a European movie shot under overcast. Way too boring. The more noirish stuff on the previous page is more interesting to me.

 

Phil

[DavidSloan]

Hey Teno...that Ungaro photo is sweet. Who's the photographer?

[Tenolian Bell]

Good question, I actually don't know. I caught it trolling around a fashion board. It caught my eye. I particularly love red.

[DavidSloan]

Is there a board for fashion photographers?

[Ryan Puckett]

Does anybody here know much about Glenn Luchford's stuff? It appeals to me strongly just because of his cinematic approach too everything. Somebody posted one of his pics from his "98" Prada print campaign on the previous page. He shot a handfull of others that are recreated scenes from specific movies. ( The Shining, Blade Runner, etc.) Really good stortelling type pictures with low key lighting. I've googled a bit for more info, but haven't come up with much more then references to his work.

[Wendell_Greene]

In addition to Ritts and La Chappelle who were already mentioned some of my favorite fashion photographers:

 

 

Horst

 

Sante D' Orazio - his use of hard light in Vogue is exceptional

 

Jean Baptiste Mondino

 

Matthew Rolston

 

David Bailey

 

Peter Lindbergh

 

Jurgen Teller

 

Marc Baptiste - love his work shot in Haiti, Trinidad and Brazil

[Greg Gross]

Yes Mr. Greene,

I love horst! I have a great big book around here somehere that is filled with

Horst,underneath all the other books around here.

 

 

Greg

[Greg Gross]

David,

Don't let anybody fool you! You've got some great shots here,representing

current fashion photography.

 

Greg

[DavidSloan]

Thanks, Greg. I guess to each is own. But hey, you and I agree that shots like these are something to aspire to. :)

[Greg Gross]

David,

Just take some time and think about everything thats involved in a shoot

like this. If you have a fashion photographer who shoots like this everyday

granted it might seem like a fairly easy task to him. I may shoot some fash-

ion stuff maybe only 4 or 5 times a year. There's no shame in preparation.

Ask Herb Ritts if he takes time to prepare for a shoot. When I shoot it I usu-

ally have a local ad agency rep or art director hanging over my head, asking

me to do the impossible with the camera and driving the budget up! Its amaz-

ing though that usually after all the little arguments,clashes and nitpicking,

they will say, hey thats a great shot, that will do it. Not just because of my

camera work but also when I explain to them how much more money they are

going to have to pay me, dollars and cents enter in here. Personally I like to

photograph beautiful women in low key,eylight but not real snappy. I f you

get to see David Mullen's "North Fork" you'll see some examples of eyelight

there that are not real snappy but they reveal the inner person,fit the mood

so to say. Now David has a different way to describe it but all photographers

have there different ways of defining what they like to achieve. If I'm doing

a shot in high key than I like snappy eyelight. I really like photographing

beautiful women in whites,off-whites,cashmere. If you are going to shoot

fashion you need to develop a portfolio of your work. Greg

[Greg Gross]

David,

You had mentioned Sven Nykvist in your posts and I forgot to comment.

I love Nykvist's work,especially "Persona"1966,b&w. Liv Ullmann and Bibi

Andersson were just simply photographed so beautifully in this film. I think

what I like best about Nykvist is that he did not overlight. Did you know that

that Nykvist had a fasination with faces. This earned him the nick name "two

faces and a teacup." One thing I like to always do is to explore the possibil-

ities of a lens(meaning current lens I'm using on camera at any one time).

I like to move the camera and see what happens to the subject,frame. Now

I know sometimes its not practical to move a motion picture camera and cer-

tainly at times not possible,so you change the lens. Here's a funny little story:

One time Nykvist had an EXT. shot to do. He thought the natural light available

was too boring. He added some artificial light to the scene and created shadows

so that the actor's shadows danced on a wall. The next day when they viewed

the rushes(dailies) Ingmar Bergman, screamed at him "God damn it! How can

there be shadows when the sun has gone down?" I thought you might get a

kick out of that! Will directors and dp's always be adversaries? Here is one of

of my favorite quotes from Nykvist: "If I have a good lens and a steady camera

,that's all I need. If you notice here in lies the basic fundementals of all photo-

graphy. Merry Xmas David, Greg

[Mike Williamson]

Does anyone have a favorite book of Herb Ritts' work that they'd recommend? Or a favorite book of Helmut Newton's photos? Looking for something to spend the anticipated X-mas gift certificates on...

[Guest fstop]

This is IMO the best Ritt's book:

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books

 

It's got some absolute amazing silver prints in there- a nice, eyefull introduction to Ritts, pleasing for the coffee table yet weighty enough in the theory side to help you on an art essay.

 

I well and truly 100% love the directly homoerotic works he did too, fetishising the male form, rediscovering abstraction of organic texture in a way unheard of since Weston. Johnathan Glazer owes his entire stylistic career to Ritts, as do many others.

 

I must admit, it makes me laugh in a way reading this thread- when I was at university I went through a whole glamour photography phase that David Sloan seems to be involved with at present (and if he loves it I've no doubt he'll stick it), obsessed with portraiture and especially the photography of women and how everyone emphasised this massive taboo about making women look bad in movies- I got into 2 and 1/4 and 35mm stuff albeit lighting it without strobes but with tungsten units designed for film. I went out and bought hundreds of pounds worth of film, muslin and polystyerene, and spent HOURS doing latitude tests lighting skin tones at different exposures. I started out with bounce fill as I'd read about Watkin but then of course shooting slow 2 1/4 demands LOTS of light, the type of units I didn't have access to to do wide shots with bounce properly- after much experimenting I found the best stuff was the slower speeds pushed one stop to get gloss and added contrast, all of which soaks up so much light. I tried to get Kimball's direct fill with 216 sorted too, but unaware at the time my lighting style and taste was slightly different taking in colour temperature et al- I did all of these gorgeous portraits, totally fetished female models like they were porcelain and drove my pro-feminist tutor insane! Soft kickers in every shot and VERY close to the actreses face in order to get exposure, poor girls nearly set alight!- I did some massive blow ups that were TOTALLY grainless pushed on slower film and would obsess in close inspection and beat myself up about ANY nose shadows or traces of fill- I just ate myself up and eventually just thought "**** it" as Icouldn't get it TOTALLY shadowless. It was very frustrating. I went away did lots of reading and therotetically modified my approach in relation to how I would do fill PRACTICALLY on set the way it best suits me (big lights far away)- bounced it came back to, and thought sod it whether I can make intended glamour shots look amazingly apparently fill-less.

 

Ironically, when I started doing shorts this year and since, I just set up the fill light not even having glamour and seamless fill on my mind, and I can get it shadowless without even thinking! I think that comes with growth of understanding of EVERY aspect of your own tastes- to think I beat myself up about it cos I didn't learn it overnight! :D Was it dpforum who said we're now part of the instant generation?...

[Ram Shani]

hi all

 

i was working for same time with one of the bigest fashion photographer here in israel he likes to bring cinema lighting and not working with strobs what i discoverd that in the and everything goes thrue "photoshop" and thay change everything : the light the contrast the dof even bring eye light to the moddels eyes

change her skine tone etc.... so i think its hard to to that on feture film

 

ram

[DavidSloan]

hi all

 

i was working for same time with one of the bigest fashion photographer here in israel he likes to bring cinema lighting and not working with strobs what i discoverd that in the and everything goes thrue "photoshop" and thay change everything : the light the contrast the dof even bring eye light to the moddels eyes

change her skine tone etc.... so i think its hard to to that on feture film

 

ram

 

True, but there are motion picture commercials like the Calvin Klein ads, and Loreal, and others, that still have that pristine high key, soft look.

[Wendell_Greene]

Several commercials come to mind that capture the look of fashion print ads: the Revlon campaign featuring Halle Berry, Eva Mendes and Julianne Moore which was photographed by Janusz Kaminski, the Victoria Secret commercials [ directed by Michael Bay but IMO very much influenced by the look of George Michael's "Freedom 90" music video directed by David Fincher] and the recent Chanel spot directed by Baz Luhrmann with Nicole Kidman.

 

Advances in the DI gives DPs the same tools as they have on spots and MVs in telecine, so it's not impossible to carry a highly stylized look from print over to a feature if the story warrants it. Harris Savides is one of several filmmakers who started out in the world of high fashion [in Milan and Paris] before becoming a DP, so it's definitely possible.

 

I also recall DP Shane Hurlburt mentioning how the work of glamour photographer George Hurrell influenced his lighting.

[DavidSloan]

I saw this shot in a Harpers Bazzar of a CU on a girls face with her hair wet, in a very sexy pose. I found out the photographer set up a wall of 6 or 8 massive soft boxes, all frontal, and to the sides of her were huge walls of silver reflectors. Needless to say there wasn't even a trace of shadow, and the shot looks absolutely amazing. I wish I could find it.

[Mike Williamson]

Thanks for the recommendation on the Ritts book, Tim, I'll look for it, also I'm thinking about getting a copy of the fashion book you recommended.

 

It's interesting to hear about where you're coming from because I'm only now starting to come around to the idea that my lighting should be cosmetic as well as motivated and dramatic. I know it probably sounds absolutely insane, but on the last film I shot, it just didn't matter to me whether the lighting was traditionally flattering as long as the mood was right. For me, mood has always been the top priority, hands down, and making actresses look glamorous never crossed my mind. My starting point for lighting was film noir, by which I mean extremely bold, hard sources with lots of contrast, very sourcey with a priority on tone. The big sins for me have been overlighting and putting diffusion filters in front of the lens, which is my ultimate pet peeve. And it's not that I don't like fashion photography when it's well done, it's just that it seemed like an entirely separate activity with different goals. In filmmaking, I've been serving the story first (read: mood), everything else after that. As I get more experience, I'm starting to try and incorporate more cosmetic lighting, making the actresses look good in addition to getting the tone right, not overlighting, etc. I guess I've always felt that if I started out to try and make people look good first, the photography wouldn't be telling the story as well. Anyway, I need to get to the point where I can do both at the same time, I've simply got to get better. So back to the books...

 

And it's interesting that Wendell brings up Harris Savides because he's currently an inspiration for me, sombebody who can do beautiful and moody consistently, one of my favorite cinematographers. I find that he's absolutely committed to the story, he just happens to have incredible skills that allow him to make the photography stunningly beautfiful as well.

[Felipe Perez-Burchard]

here's another herb ritts, really good, but expensive.

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books

 

happy holidays everybody!

 

-felipe.

[Guest fstop]

It's interesting to hear about where you're coming from because I'm only now starting to come around to the idea that my lighting should be cosmetic as well as motivated and dramatic.  I know it probably sounds absolutely insane, but on the last film I shot, it just didn't matter to me whether the lighting was traditionally flattering as long as the mood was right.  For me, mood has always been the top priority, hands down, and making actresses look glamorous never crossed my mind.  My starting point for lighting was film noir, by which I mean extremely bold, hard sources with lots of contrast, very sourcey with a priority on tone.  The big sins for me have been overlighting and putting diffusion filters in front of the lens, which is my ultimate pet peeve.  And it's not that I don't like fashion photography when it's well done, it's just that it seemed like an entirely separate activity with different goals.  In filmmaking, I've been serving the story first (read: mood), everything else after that.  As I get more experience, I'm starting to try and incorporate more cosmetic lighting, making the actresses look good in addition to getting the tone right, not overlighting, etc.  I guess I've always felt that if I started out to try and make people look good first, the photography wouldn't be telling the story as well.  Anyway, I need to get to the point where I can do both at the same time, I've simply got to get better.  So back to the books...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

The thing I learned from Watkin (and this was a combined effort of reading his Yentyl AC entry and watching his movies) is that he "lights the scene, not the actress". This all sounds like he is working on one level only, but if you look closely at his stuff, he provides a photogenic padding when neccessary, so while he lights the sets with big lights far away for atmosphere, he lights in such a way often overexposed by a stop to cream haylides on the face of his female cast or uses bounce, muslin or silks to soften to flatter everyone in the frame. That photogenic padding is very intelligent and delicate if you are lighting big lights far away because you have to create a standard portraiture, a light everyone can look good in by sort of making an average from observing the best way all the talent looks individually, and also from every angle so you don't have to relight for close ups. As we've mentioned before, American sitcoms such as Cheers, Frasier and Friends also did this alot with multicameras, or the 50s musicals thing where they had grand tracking shots around sets with big lights far away- I personally just find this way of working VERY fulfilling; the extra amount of homework you have to do in the long run just makes things WAY easier on set, plus you've got in built automatic consistency and shooting tracking becomes far easier too. I appreciate this isn't for everyone's tastes though.

[David Mullen ASC]

It's also hard to use large lights from far away on small locations with no windows...

 

But I agree in the sense that I've been learning to light by backing away from the actors, i.e. as the budgets go up, I can light from farther back with larger lights. On the other hand, nothing quite looks the same (due to fall-off) as working a soft light as close as possible -- Derek VanLint talks about this in the AC article on "Alien" where he found it hard at first to get used to the anamorphic frame because he couldn't work his soft lights as close as he did in commercials.

 

As for Mike's comments, you can't get too dogmatic until you become such a big DP that you can shoot every project the same way stylistically. On projects, you will have to cater to the leading actress' needs in terms of lighting and diffusion. I was just told this story about Vilmos Zsigmond being told by his leading actress what diffusion he had to use on her close-ups -- and the irony was that the filter he wanted to use instead was actually a heavier diffusion, it's just that she wanted what was used on her last movie but some other DP.

 

And I'm sure that Watkin had to bend a little to deal with Striesand, although the final results on "Yentyl" never fall too far into overt cosmetic glamorization on the lighting. But there was more diffusion than Watkin normally uses (which is none usually.) Streisand used to tell this story about how she wished she had hired Storaro but he was too expensive and she kicked herself for not spending the money -- it's a bit silly because lighting women with flattering soft light is not something Storaro does much of and I'm sure there would have been lots of arguments on the set. I asked Stephen Goldblatt if Streisand had tried to fire Watkin the way she tried to fire Goldblatt and he said "yes, in fact, she asked me to replace Watkin on 'Yentyl' but I refused". And when Streisand asked other DP's to replace Goldblatt on "Prince of Tide", everyone refused so she stayed with him.

[Guest fstop]

It's also hard to use large lights from far away on small locations with no windows...

 

:rolleyes: :P

 

LOL!

 

It's more the mentality though- Watkin in those kind of situations would either go with the practical only or bounce from behind the camera, same sort of thing Serra does- of course you could do it more intricately/elaborately if the camera is locked off, I doubt anyone's going to have a shot in which multiple actors in a closet lit by one light bulb in which everyone needs to look great shot with an up/low angle and a figure of 8 + 360 degree hothead to deal with in their lifetime!- Wow, I think that there MUST be the most challenging shot imaginable! :ph34r:

 

So that Goldblatt Prince of Tides rumour is true!! How did Dante Spinotti get off so lightly on her last flick?

Edited December 23, 2004 by fstop

[Mike Williamson]

As for Mike's comments, you can't get too dogmatic until you become such a big DP that you can shoot every project the same way stylistically.  On projects, you will have to cater to the leading actress' needs in terms of lighting and diffusion.

 

Yes, David, I'll take your word for it. So far I've been shooting essentially student projects with lovely young actresses who look good no matter how poorly I light them, they also don't have enough experience with filmmaking to request diffusion filters, etc. And yes, I'm trying to relax my general approach to shooting a bit more. I realize that because of my strict adherence to certain rules, I've been able to create a higher degree of visual continuity in the films I've worked on than if I'd been winging it. So it's difficult to give up some of that control over the image (and the story) to cater to someone's worries, I don't like the idea of being controlled by fear. But I realize that the actors are the ones who end up on the screen, so you can't blame them for wanting to look their best. So far I've been sheltered from many of the commercial realities of the film world, and I must admit that it's nice.

 

On one of the commentaries on the "Seven" DVD, Darius Khondji says that he feels many films are shot too beautifully, which is an idea I really relate to. That was one of my guiding principles on the last movie I worked on, the director and I were very much after a Fincher-esque mood. Maybe I'll post a trailer at some point and see if I can get some critical feedback on it. Thanks for the advice, it's good to hear some of these behind the scenes stories about larger films, good preparation for the future (if I'm lucky!).

[DavidSloan]

Does anybody here know much about Glenn Luchford's stuff?  It appeals to me strongly just because of his cinematic approach too everything.  Somebody posted one of his pics from his "98" Prada print campaign on the previous page. He shot a handfull of others that are recreated scenes from specific movies.  ( The Shining, Blade Runner, etc.)  Really good stortelling type pictures with low key lighting.  I've googled a bit for more info, but haven't come up with much more then references to his work.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

He's really good...here are a few more for you: