Film portraiture using only natural light

Hasselblad 500c 80mm tri-x

henrietta-01.jpg



henrietta-02.jpg
 
Shot circa 2000 on a trip to Bali, this casual portrait of my soon to be wife (then aged 35) was taken with a Nikon F801s and 28-85mm f3.5-4.5 (my camera and travel lens of choice back then) but sadly the film's identity is not available as I scanned this several years ago and no longer have a record. They were completely pre digital days for me as I resisted the urge to buy one until the Nikon D70s proved its worthiness by multiple good reviews several years later.

Bali 2000 by Life in Shadows, on Flickr
 
Erik van Straten said:
Beautiful wife you have, Peter, really a great beauty.

How did you get those highlights in her eyes with only "natural" light?

Erik.
Click to expand...

You know I really do not know (the photo is from almost 20 years ago). But I sincerely believe I did not use a flash....... as I did not have one for that camera (and as was common at the time the camera itself did not have a built in flash). Here is a later portrait (this one taken with a digital camera not film) where you can also see catch lights in her eyes - and this one is more clearly lit by natural light, coming from the side in this instance. So it does happen. PS in the original photo posted you can see from the shadow angles (though they are not pronounced) that the dominant light is very soft and filtered but coming from the upper left of the photo which accords with some of the visible shadows in the background.

Thoughts by Life in Shadows, on Flickr
 
Maybe she was wearing contact lenses in the first shot.

There is only one draftsman who could have put this beauty on paper: Ingres. Do you know his pencil portrait drawings? Most probably Ingres made those using a camera lucida, so his art is very interesting for photographers too.

Erik.
 
Erik van Straten said:
Maybe she was wearing contact lenses in the first shot.

There is only one draftsman who could have put this beauty on paper: Ingres. Do you know his pencil portrait drawings? Most probably Ingres made those using a camera lucida, so his art is very interesting for photographers too.

Erik.
Click to expand...


And yes she does (and did) often wear contact lenses! But it is something I never even turned my mind to before.
 
Out to Lunch said:
Ingres aside...my take vis-a-vis the second pic...a wonderful portrait with, as the Shanghainese would say..."Tuu Mach" photoshopping. Cheers, P
Click to expand...

Yep acknowledged and that's fine by me, I never pretend that my approach suits everyone. But in general with such images, I prefer a somewhat "painterly" and "interpretive", to a more "realistic" rendering, so I gotta admit to being a bit addicted to "Tuu Mach" when it comes to post work. And I never hide the fact that many of my images have been post processed (if it is not already obvious - as indeed it often is).

I tend to the view that if people can shoot in black and white (or indeed convert to black and white from color) why is this any different in principle? Those folks are not representing reality - they are interpreting it, as I am, just in a different way. It all comes down to being a matter of personal preference and style. Cheers.
 
Erik van Straten said:
Maybe she was wearing contact lenses in the first shot.

There is only one draftsman who could have put this beauty on paper: Ingres. Do you know his pencil portrait drawings? Most probably Ingres made those using a camera lucida, so his art is very interesting for photographers too.

Erik.
Click to expand...


BTW I am not familiar with Ingres. Any links?
 
peterm1 said:
BTW I am not familiar with Ingres. Any links?
Click to expand...


Just Google: ingres portrait drawings

He made about 400 of them, from 1804 until 1860, with a pencil (graphite) that was invented by Conté in 1780.

Recent research suggest that he used a camera lucida.

The camera lucida was patented in 1806 by William Wollaston. Ingres got the Prix de Rome in 1806, surely he found this instrument in the Villa Medici, the headquarters of the French Academy in Rome.

I think he had already one in Paris before he left for Rome. He also used the camera lucida for drawing landscapes.


48921191011_3ca9d28741_o.jpg



His wife.


Erik.
 
Erik van Straten said:
Just Google: ingres portrait drawings

He made about 400 of them, from 1804 until 1860, with a pencil (graphite) that was invented by Conté in 1780.

Recent research suggest that he used a camera lucida.

The camera lucida was patented in 1806 by William Wollaston. Ingres got the Prix de Rome in 1806, surely he found this instrument in the Villa Medici, the headquarters of the French Academy in Rome.

I think he had already one in Paris before he left for Rome. He also used the camera lucida for drawing landscapes.

His wife.

Erik.
Click to expand...

Cool thank you very much for the info and the compliment. I also was not familiar with the camera lucida though of course understood how renaissance painters were said to have used a camera obscura to render real life images as a guide to their painting of them. I will look up more on both Ingres and the camera lucida.

On a related note I remember undertaking drawing classes many years ago in which we were trained to use a very structured / logical approach to drawing - or really in most cases in this class, copying other images rather than drawing from life. The paper was marked out in lightly lined squares as an aid to composition and both the object being copied and the drawing made were upside down. The idea was that we needed to train our eyes not to "see" what we think we have seen but to see what we actually have seen. By drawing in that highly structured and somewhat artificial manner we tended to short circuit our brain's tendency to look at an image and go, for example "Ah that is a woman......I know how women look" and then impose that preconception on our rendered image by painting what our brain tells us we saw. Viewing the image upside down broke that pattern and drawing by squares (a little like painting by numbers) helped further impose structure and order. Interesting that old timers had their tricks too. And it is interesting that the camera obscura also rendered images upside down too.

regards Peter
 
Yes, in fact a view camera is the same thing as a camera obscura.


The method of squaring the paper to enlarge a drawing is very old. Many things from the past that we now see as simple solutions were in fact great inventions.


A camera lucida is a prism through wich one can see the subject and at the same time the paper on wich the drawing is made. It is as if the subject is projected on the paper. The artist then can easily indicate the important parts of the subject. Personally I've never used one, I wish I did in the past. It seems that the camera lucida was long forgotten. It was David Hockney - a great Ingres admirer - who re-introduced this instrument in about 1999.


Erik.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

John Bragg
What film developer is your favorite and why ?
5 6 7
Replies
135
Views
11K
Godfrey
Godfrey
O
processing and chemicals
Replies
15
Views
1K
Andrew Sowerby
Andrew Sowerby
John Bragg
Underdog lenses
Replies
17
Views
2K
Joao
Joao
John Bragg
Photograph like Jane Bown
Replies
15
Views
1K
John Bragg
John Bragg
J
  • Article Article
The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of the 110 Format By 2009, 110 was kaput. Lomography brought it back! Part 2: A selection of fascinating 110 cameras.
2 3
Replies
41
Views
4K
Timmyjoe
Timmyjoe
Back
Top Bottom