Martin Szipal, our 80 year old instructor arrived to the 4th session wearing a claret (well, reddish for me) jacket. I’m writing about his outfit all the time because he always looks stylish paying attention to the smallest details. He clearly maintains a style. But it cost him money of course. As he said once: “… my sister asked me: ‘you made so much money in America. Where’s that?’ And I told her: ‘I spent two thirds of what I made to make people think that I was extraordinarily rich. I was driving a Rolls Royce, was wearing expensive cloths and was living in a penthouse. So two thirds went for these and I was living from the rest in a modest way.’”

“The purpose of using a light source is not to lit the dark areas. It’s for creating dimension with the shadows.”

First of all I would like to share two pictures where the models were lit and instructed by Martin. One light source again with reflecting white surfaces. This is really Martin’s style.

This occasion was very special to me because Martin checked my pictures I made during the last year and told his opinion about them. Extremely useful. Can learn a lot from that. Do you remember what Joe McNally wrote about editors?

	Martin said that this picture was a good one. The monkey is in golden ratio, and the blurred background brings him forward giving dimension. Even the reflected light in the monkey’s eyes are OK. I was so happy to hear that.
	This is actually my favourite picture of all I made so far. Martin said that the background and golden ratio is OK, but he wouldn’t have put the hand with the apple there. He said that it is not that important to tell stories with a picture.
	“Watch out for the background. It’s not easy to find a homogeneous background. Remember when I said that I teach with scissors? It should have been cropped.” I cropped it a bit. Might have been cropped even more.
	“If you just put the light source a bit to camera right placing a highlight on the left side of his nose, then his nose is pushed, curved to the other direction.” Have you ever considered such an impact of lighting?
	“This is bad story. There is no point in making such a picture.” I was lucky starting with the monkey. There was at least one good photo in the set.
	“You cannot cut the eye and the nose cannot hang out of the face. With the nose it’s almost there, but you cannot cut the eye.“
	“The main light is good, but the rim light does not look good on her face. The stairs are good, giving dimension, but you overcomplicated with the second light. Her fingers should have been adjusted. The left hand is almost OK, but the right one… That’s not even a hand. And her right knee should have been moved slightly to the left. Models in New York asking for 500 bucks for an hour know how to pose. They know how their fingers will look like on the picture. But you have to adjust everyone else.“
	“The composition is not bad. But why did you have the second light from camera left? There is no need for that. Today everyone wants to show everything on the picture. There is no need for that.“
	“Look at the highlight on his face. It’s like his ear is completely disconnected from his face. Otherwise a handsome guy.“
	“OK. I gonna show you how to put light into the eyes. You must have big pupils and the lit surrounding reflected in the eyes in a good portrait. You completely miss that here. Girls knew it the old days that they look more attractive for the men with big pupils. But it’s psychology: when someone is interested in you her pupils are big. Check it next time when talking to a girl.”
	“Crop it. Put the head close to the right edge of the picture. All the shapes got emphasis by putting a straight line next to them.” So I tried to re-crop it. See the result here:

“Ii was in 1956. I was climbing up the stairs to home to the fourth floor carrying 10 kilos of potato on my back. A friend of mine caught me on the second floor and got me to go the America. ‘Am I stupid, or what?’ I asked myself. ‘I make good money here, I have no problem at all. Why should I go?’ And finally he persuaded me. So I put the potato down, put on my jacket, took my camera and the hand of my second wife and we left the country. We stopped only in Vienna. We spent a day in prison – for the political asylum. We felt ourselves fantastically. Very good company gathered there. We got bananas, oranges and everything was happy. We spent three weeks in the refugee camp and then we proceeded to New York. There I met Nixon. He came to see the refugees. We shook hands and I asked the others who the chap was who looked like my uncle. And they said that that was the president.”

“I did not speak English. When we went to Cleveland with my wife to find the job I left the address at home. I told my wife not to worry I remembered the name of the company. I saw a picture of the office and it has big letters on the building: ‘HERE PARKING‘. This is how much I spoke English at that time.”

We were practicing facial expressions on this session. Martin lit the model and we were to instruct her to make only small changes on the expression of her face. Martin gave an example: “When you are out for a dinner with your boyfriend and there is a good looking man at the table next to yours and he smiles at you. You want to smile back at him but your boyfriend should not notice that. Show us that smile.”

Can you see the shadow here?
No smile at all	Barely noticeable, tiny, little smile

There was a big window on the right side of the model and that natural light was the main light here. On her left we used the reflecting white boards.

And a behind the scenes photo for finishing the session:

Read about the other sessions:
Portrait Photography Class – Session #1
Portrait Photography Class – Session #2
Portrait Photography Class – Session #3
Portrait Photography Class – Session #5
Portrait Photography Class – Session #6
Portrait Photography Class – Session #7
Portrait Photography Class – Session #8