Editorial Portraits 2

© Tom Parkes

I was commissioned to photograph Dr Rabia Malik at the Marlborough Family Service in north London and is sometimes the case, the interview was scheduled to take place at the same time as the shoot.

Having divided access to a subject whose time is limited imposes some restrictions on the photography, but also has some advantages. The first decision to be made is whether to shoot the picture before, during or after the interview takes place. Shooting during the interview means it's relatively easy to make animated pictures where the subject is seemingly unaware of the camera.  The logistical problem is one of arranging the subject against a suitable background, lighting them and still leaving enough room for the writer to work and the photographer to move as unobtrusively as possible around the subject, keeping the both the writer and any microphones they have positioned out of shot. The disadvantage of this approach is that the subject will be looking anywhere but at the camera and once the interview concludes they will be looking to get away, so don't count on more than a few extra pictures to camera.

Given a free choice of shooting the picture before or after the interview I always opt to sit through the interview. The extra time to have a good look around the location, listen to the interview and observe the subject is invaluable and will almost invariably result in a better photograph. The only real risk of this approach is that the interview may overrun or be cut short by external events, leaving only a few moments for the photograph.

On this day, the only practical location available was the medium sized room in which both the interview and photography would take place and there was the added consideration that a short additional interview would be filmed by the writer for the magazine's web site. I opted to shoot the portrait at the beginning, having ruled out an interview style picture. The room was regularly used as a general meeting room for both the staff and clients of the Family Service and was initially fairly unpromising from a photographer's perspective. At one end of the room though was a green chalkboard, it had  been used in a previous meeting and I decided not to clear it. Positioning Dr Malik against a harmonious colour meant the eye would be drawn to her face and the chalk pattern would balance the composition nicely. I've always liked pictures which use a limited colour palette. With relatively little time to spend on set up, I chose a single SB800, zoomed to concentrate the light to a tight beam, shooting through a light panel from almost overhead. At such close range, a speedlight will recycle in a suitably short time but I would have had the option of adding a second SB800 rubber banded to the first to share the load and give either an extra stop of power or half the recycling time.

Editorial Portraits

© Tom Parkes

This picture was made earlier this year for a magazine feature. It's a departure from most of my portraiture in that it was made by available light from a window, albeit diffused with a light panel. The late afternoon sunlight is so warm that a range of white balances were possible, right down to 3000K (equivalent to the warm light from a household tungsten lamp).

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium

Back from a whirlwind visit to Brussels covering a conference on behalf of a client; shooting speakers, delegates and the accompanying exhibition space. I do a lot of this kind of work and believe me, it's challenging. Over the course of two days I shot, edited, captioned and uploaded more than 2,000 images to supply media outlets across Europe and it's always rewarding to watch the download statistics building in the hours, days and weeks following an event.

Conference lighting directors often use very low levels of light. It's intimate, and running the lights at such low levels makes skin glow. The eye has an affinity for the warm light of an incandescent light source reaching back to the dawn of time. For photographers this can mean working at ISO values which would have been impossible only a couple of years ago. Today, we shoot at ISO 3200 and above, confident that the quality will be there, and able to focus on an eyeball in levels of light where it's barely possible to see, let alone read.

I always like to include a few images like the one below in the coverage. This sort of picture  always finds a home in a design somewhere.

Moving quickly from a windowless room, lit largely by the reflected light from a projector screen, I made the first image using the 3000K white balance I already had set on my D3S before quickly dialing in a more technically correct white balance for the second frame. I prefer the first version.

Texture and Tone

Photographers are attracted to the strangest things. A splash of light against a wall, a patch of peeling paint resembling nothing more than an artist's palette; decay. The reminder that something passed by today will not be there forever. Stop now. Make a picture.

From a technical viewpoint, the tonal range of this picture is enormous and although the internet version inevitably compresses the shadow detail, in the original file you can see all the way into the darkest recesses. This is an ISO 800 image, hand held and without any reflectors bouncing back the light from the window. And although I carefully selected the exposure to retain the highlight detail, it's otherwise straight from the camera. No HDR tricks. This is a level of performance you only see from the high end professional cameras which retain dynamic range as ISO increases.

Nikon D3 24-70mm f2.8 lens 1/200sec F8