Portrait class

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

Here's some photos from the portrait course (last lesson this evening).
The photographer (Piero Casadei) is not only a portrait photographer, he makes all kind of studio work. His last work was made for Ducati motorbikes, you can take a look here:

http://www.ducati.it/moto/diavel/index.do

he made all studio photos of the motos and of the models (the exteriors photos by someone else).

We started from a typical theatrical lighting (perfect zenital lighting), to verify the expressive possiblity of this scheme which is unusual for portraits but typical of stageplays.
It is a theatre lamp (not a photographic lamp) that was used here. Some of us students posed as models:

1

Agata, the photographer's dog. She got fond of me immediately. When we sat at the table she laid to sleep over my feet Very Happy

2

Believe it or not, this is a statue, a whole block made of metal (and it's larger than what you see here). Casadei worked for many artists and he got paid with artworks instead of money:

3

Casadei at work - he works with flashes so you see only some guide lights here:

4

5

Here's my attempts using the studio flashes. The image quality that you can obtain with those flashes is amazing!
If with sunlight your image sharpness is = 100, with those high power flashes sharpness is = 200, this gives the idea and I can now understand how they can make such big enlargements.
Our task was to make a photo that was "male", i.e. not sweet but strong. I tried with lateral lighting, the first photo with no fill (to create a mystery situation), the other two with a small fill flash at a distance:

6

7

I show the third photo in both colour and B&W because I like the different colour temperatures

8

9

From this point on, the flash transmitter stopped working with the Canon cameras - whatever the reason.
So I had to take photos using only the guide light Evil or Very Mad

Some of them turned out good never the less - I more photographed the situations however than taking portraits.
In some photos I did not correct the white balance because the warm colour matched with the turquoise hair better, making the pictures look as if they were cross processed:

10

11

12

13

15

17

Agata again! Very Happy

16

She did not move a single hair Laughing

18

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

Here's a 100% crop from image #8
The lens I used in most of the photos is the Contax Planar 1.4/85. A few pictures were taken with the Distagon 1.4/35.
This is Planar 1.4/85 with a f/11 aperture:

patrickh · Expire: 2011-11-18

Thanks for this enlightening trip Orio (excuse the pun). You are certainly honing your skills in a most impressive way and those samples are extraordinarily good. I assume it was your 5MkII? Zeiss glass?

patrickh

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

themoleman342 · Expire: 2013-01-24

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

mmelvis · Expire: 2015-05-09

12 is the best picture in the series. The silhouette of the photographer in the fore ground makes a wonderful image

poilu · Expire: 2019-08-29