photonovice.net » Portrait Photography Class

Portrait Photography Class - Session #6

Posted by photonovice on April 17th, 2008

On the sixth session of our portrait photography class we touched upon the hand, feet and leg posing but we did go into details. Just run through a few pictures, not all made by Martin Szipal - our instructor and he highlighted those things.

“One finger can hang out. That looks nice.”

“Photographing hands and feet is the most difficult. When I see a photo, the first things I check are the hands and feet. If those are deformed, then the picture was not made by a photographer.”

“The model has to put her weight always on the hind (sic) leg.”

“Olivia Hussey - you know Zefirelli’s Juliet - is an amazing model. She has a very photogenic and beautiful face. It was great to work with her. Her photo had been in the shop window of my studio for two months. An other one who I really liked was Priscilla Presley. Sweet and charming and whatever I told her she did it. She was also unbelievably photogenic with an almost perfectly symmetric face. Charlene Tilton - Lucy Ewing from Dallas - was exactly like in the movies: hysteric and crazy.”

“I was unable to photograph Leslie Nielsen with him looking into the lens. He was very shy and diffident when not playing. It was funny how I met him. When I was building my studio I went to a near-by hardware store. A handsome young man was standing there seeing that I was looking for something desperately. Asked me if he could help and gave some directions. Next time when I went there he was there and I turned to him immediately asking where the door handles were. He told me that those were on the second floor. A months later I was called that I should make photos of a young star. When he entered my studio and I said: ‘Oh, the shop assistant from the hardware store.’”

Then we looked through a few double portraits and started to work with two models. It is definitely more complicated than with one. Especially with Martin’s style when everything to the smallest details is planned and instructed.
In case of a group photo the whole group should form a geometric shape, but all the members should be perfect in terms of posing and lighting.

“When I was leaving the US I piled up all the prints of my photos in the middle of my living room, stood there for a second, saluted, and went out of the door.”

And finally we made some dramatic lighting on a muscular male model with one and then two light sources.

And finally a photo overexposed by mistake and cropped and enhanced in Lightroom.

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