Portraits: Environmental Style? Capturing Subject in Context!

Last month, I had a chance to sit in for a couple of hours with an amazing photographic seminar featuring an outstanding "star". His name? It's Gregory Heisler. He's a 62-year-old professional photographer who is known for his inventive and interesting portrait work found on the covers of major magazines, especially Time. For this magazine, he has produced many of their People of the Year visuals. This includes his varied camera techniques, such as a double exposure to show a famed cover labeled the two faces of Bush. He has won many top national awards and he now also serves as a visiting professor at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.

A key part of Heisler's career was his move to New York and working as an assistant to the famed photographer Arnold Newman. Known for his visuals of artists and politicians, Newman has been labeled as the father of "environmental portraits". Newman invested this style for showing the subject in a location that reflected their work, interests, background, etc. Heisler gave us the background about his early years and explained important photo details in achieving many of these cover shots, how they happened, etc. Very, very interesting and highly educational. His sense of humor and history was amazing and very inspiring. Below are few of his visual samples, successes, etc.

From Popular Photography, you can read and see more for his secrets, tips, suggestions and ideas:

http://www.popphoto.com/how-to/2013/12/tips-pro-gregory-heisler-portrait-photography

Also, check out this nice profile and interview:

https://nppa.org/page/photo-journal-gregory-heisler-exploiter-light

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

AFRICA?!!?: Lots of interesting and dramatic pictures can be seen from my latest live/blog at:

http://www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2310337

Now at 18,996 views for this reporting and visual sharing that includes Cape Town, all along the South Africa coast, Mozambique, Victoria Falls/Zambia and Botswana's famed Okavango Delta area.

First is one of my iPhone pictures of Gregory Heisler doing his program last month in Central Ohio. The next four pictures, from an Internet web search, are just of a few samples for which he explained "the rest of the story" as to how these visual were set-up, done, why, etc.:

Oh, that would have been exciting to see. He's on my list of top five influences, and I've learned a lot from what little I've read from/about him. Between his comments about staying out from behind the camera while shooting the Boston Strong cover for SI, his comments in the piece you linked, and other stuff I've been learning from Peter Hurley, I've really been changing how I shoot significantly. I did some big-group shots for a family reunion on my wife's side a few weeks ago, and I put the camera up on a tripod and just trusted it (it was higher than me anyway), and just came alongside it and talked up the crowd with silly stuff. Never a "smile!", never a "cheese!", none of that. I'm really happy with the results!

Oh, that would have been exciting to see. He's on my list of top five influences, and I've learned a lot from what little I've read from/about him. Between his comments about staying out from behind the camera while shooting the Boston Strong cover for SI, his comments in the piece you linked, and other stuff I've been learning from Peter Hurley, I've really been changing how I shoot significantly. I did some big-group shots for a family reunion on my wife's side a few weeks ago, and I put the camera up on a tripod and just trusted it (it was higher than me anyway), and just came alongside it and talked up the crowd with silly stuff. Never a "smile!", never a "cheese!", none of that. I'm really happy with the results!

Appreciate your great follow-up and added comments. On that "Boston Strong" cover shot for Sports Illustrated, Gregory Heisler gave much details for how he captured that image. Where most of the people were at was actually in the shadows of the library building left side. But flashes helped to "pop" the people's faces out and make the difference between only good versus being a very good image. His background and details as to how these various pictures came together and were achieved is a big part of the "learning process" gained by attending. Glad that you understand his background and great skills.

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

Enjoyed a 14-day, Jan. 20-Feb. 3, 2014, Sydney to Auckland adventure, getting a big sampling for the wonders of "down under” before and after this cruise. Go to:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1974139

for more info and many pictures of these amazing sights in this great part of the world. Now at 155,184 views for this posting.

Hmmm...apparently the quote function is broken for me at the moment. Yes, in the Boston Strong cover shoot, the flashes were used to bring out the faces. That to me is relatively simple logic: it's not worth the effort involved in trying to self-light a 3,000-person group shot, as there's not enough power in the street, you'd need generators, etc. Flash/strobe essentially boils down to three general use cases:

1) ambient light is your main light, flash is used as fill/accent.

2) ambient light is a fill light, flash is used as a main/accent light.

3) ambient light is not used, and flash is used as your only light(s).

#1 is typical when the sun is directly on the subject, as the power curve to make your way to #2/#3 demands either a generator, a pro-level battery lighting system, two or more prosumer battery strobes, really "strong" modifiers (that bring challenges of their own), and/or relatively short flash-to-subject distances.

#2 is great when the sun is at least a little bit muted; stick it behind the subject or otherwise masked from the faces (you know, by tall Boston buildings) so you can layer in the flash light without so much power as #1.

#3 is basically most any studio shoot out there. Ambient light is never in the right place, never consistent, never a great color or the right hardness/softness, etc., but inevitably it's weak enough that you can easily expose over it, sometimes by a mile.

Lighting strategy aside, I felt there was so much wisdom in how he chose to wear a red jacket so he'd be obvious up in the bucket lift, and used a bullhorn to corral the troops and be done essentially with the first frame. That to me was the biggest nugget from that shoot. His choice of a tilt-shift 90 with a 2x TC for that TIME cover with Bill & Melinda Gates and Bono was brilliant, enough that the TS90 is working its way up my wish list as 90mm is right about where I want to be for my up&coming headshot work.