portraits tomorrow

FrankS

FrankS

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My wife's sister and her husband from England are visiting for a couple of weeks. They've seen some B+W portraits I've done of other family members and have asked me to do them. Primary camera is a Hasselblad 500cm with 80mm Planar (50mm in 35 terms 🙂) and jsut for fun, I'm taking along my Hexar RF and Summarit lens. I was happy with the results of the Hexar + Summar lens with my father's portrait, so now I want to test out this other classic lens. I'm using the Hexar RF just because it's new to me and it's got quick motorized film advance. The higher viewfinder mag. Leicas would otherwise be a smarter choice, but this is jsut for fun.

She's Japanese and he is English. I was thinking of asking them to do that famous John Lennon and Yoko Ono pose.
 
The one where Ono is lying clothed and Lennon is curled up next to her fully nude. Annie Lebowitz's famous shot. Hours before Lennon was gunned down.
 
Art and ywenz, that's the one.

I'm doing these by north window light, so it's HP5+ 400 in the big camera for an exposure of 1/125@f2.8 and FP4+ 100 in the small one: 1/60@f2 on the Summarit.

Thinking about things in bed last night, I decided to use my M6 with .85 mag to help with the focusing of the nearly wide open Summarit at close range. I'm waiting on a diopter for the Hexar viewfinder so even though the Hexar is still new and exciting, it would not be the best choice.
 
Are we back again to the *** web site topic? 😀 😀 I personally think it will be great portrait

10202801-10202807-slarge.jpg


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johnyoko1.jpg
 
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Frank, have you considered sneaking in a couple of shots with your Summitar? Or do you feel that it may be just a tad too soft for the lighting? I'm curious because I haven't done any portrait work, and the Summitar seems as if it might be a decent portrait lens wide open.
 
Roger, I will eventually try all my lenses in different situations. 2 weekends ago it was the Summar's turn for my father's portraits. Today I'll try the Summarit. Next time the Summitar.
 
Frank,
I hope you don't mind my resurrecting this thread, but I was wondering how this went. Perhaps you have already discussed it in another thread and it went right by me, or perhaps you chose not to discuss it...
 
It went great. The best thing was the liveliness and friendliness of the subjects that I dealt with. We were all having fun. This is one of the secrets to portrait photography I think: to get your subjects to have fun or at least to feel comfortable. You have to be a people-person.

I set up a mono light flash shooting through a white umbrella and a dark grey canvas backdrop. I shot with both Bronica RF645 and Hasselblad 500cm with normal lenses hand-held. The Bronica was easier to focus and the viewfinder does not black out as with the H-blad.

The worst thing you can do is force folks to pose in unnatural ways/ways they think is goofy, so I told them I'd do the typical stuff but am open to their posing suggestions including off-beat ones. They came up with some ideas then, and because it was their idea, they were into it, rather than fighting me. It helped that there were 3 teenagers involved.

The B+W negs and contact sheets look very good. They haven't gotten back to me to order prints yet. As part of the $150 sitting fee, they get some 8x10s all of the same neg, and prints from other poses are extra. This encourages me to take many photos they will buy.
 
Oops, I goofed! The description above is for a paying portrait job I did. The Sister in law shoot was totally different.

It took place at their house and the plumber who was supposed to come earlier in the day to fix leaking pipes showed up at the same time as me. Needless to say there were distractions and no appropriate mood set. It was not possible to even suggest the John and Ono pose!
 
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