fstopinertia – photography of angela marklew

A couple weeks ago I decided I wanted to shoot another double portrait, because I normally shoot singles.  It was a super low key shoot, using only available light.

My third and fourth “challenges” from Ken Merfeld were to shoot two portraits of the same person utilizing radically different techniques and to shoot a portrait of someone laying down, respectively.

Taking a portrait of someone laying down has its own challenges and can be done in many ways.  When someone is laying down, two important things to consider are the type of surface they are laying on and how their clothes (and in my case, jewelry) will lay.  These factors will ultimately effect how their body will look in the photo.  What was more important for me however, was camera angle and point of view.  I wanted to be on the same level as my model – when I am laying down and photographing (especially if my subject is also laying down), the rest of the world seems to melt away and I find I connect with my subject on a whole other psychological level.  For this assignment, I shot a model I had never worked with before – which is something I love doing.  Prior to the shoot I had no idea what I wanted my final image to look like – the only thing I had going into it was my colour palette.

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I started back up again with Ken Merfeld and his portrait seminars.  I was in Nashville for the first assignment (more on Nashville in another post) so here is what I produced for the second assignment – to shoot a portrait outdoors at night using only available light…

Thanks to Patrick for getting dolled up and sitting for me at all hours of the night.

Here’s a photo from last month – shot for my last workshop assignment, the “wet portrait”

We hiked up to Malibu Creek Canyon and walked along the creek until we found what I figured was a pretty secluded place – that is, until we were waist deep in water as a group of about 20 children walked by – according to their comments, our shoot was “rated M for mature”.  Props to Linda for braving the cold water and maintaining her composure.

I have to say that for me, photographing two people is probably the most daunting thing to do.  Now, I’m not saying that shooting one person is a walk in the park, because there are always challenges with every shoot but think about it…shooting a single person, you only have to worry about the light falling on one person, the emotion coming from one person, and the placement in the frame of one person – your focus is solely on that one person.  The greatest challenge (and this is with any portrait) is creating an image that draws the viewer in.

Shooting a group of people (3 or more) is fun in that you can play around with breaking the group up into smaller sub-groups (my preference is to always have odd-numbered groups of people).  Groups can be more challenging in terms of lighting, but by your arrangement of people, you can always create a dynamic, visually compelling image.  Now we get into shooting the double portrait…the reason this is the most challenging for me is two-fold.  First, you can’t really break up your subjects into smaller groups of odd numbers because (and here is reason number two) shooting a double portrait is about shooting the relationship between two people.  In shooting a double portrait you have to create a visually compelling image that draws the viewer in and makes them understand the relationship.

When shooting a portrait, no matter how many people are involved, I feel it’s important to not only make the portrait informational, but emotional as well.  As Paul Strand once said, “it is one thing to photograph people.  It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their human-ness.”

This is Milo.

Among other things, he works as a contortionist at the Venice sideshow.  We got together one day so I could take some photos of him – let me tell you, this kid is no joke.

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