Jan van Eyk, Annie Leibovitz's Willie Nelson & A Muse
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Inspiration and a muse are closely intertwined.
In my most recent case it involved a muse, a 57 year-old free spirit, 15th
century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, a circular mirror in my muse’s bedroom
and a withdrawn book (it cost me $1.50) a 2003 First Edition of Annie Leibovitz’s
American Music. The book came from the stacks of the Vancouver Public Library’s
Oakridge branch.
In Leibovitz’s beautiful book I was
instantly drawn to her portrait of Willie Nelson. I have taken many very good
profile portraits in my life but I have always lit from my subject’s face. It
never occurred to me to do it in the opposite way.
During this Putin fiasco in Ukraine/Crimea
several folk from the otherwise banal facebook have pointed out that Putin
appears in many portraits by Flemish painters. In particular they cite Van Eyck’s
portrait of the Arnolfini Marriage.
So when I showed up at my muse’s apartment
today and saw her circular mirror in her bedroom I heard very loud bells of
inspiration. They rang again when I saw the Mexican painting in her living
room.
In my waning years of photography I find
myself shifting back and fourth between my roots (natural light, often called
available light) and my later years (mid 80s on) obsession with all sorts of
artificial lighting. A big injection to
this mixture has been my discovery (a bit on the late side as the film is
discontinued but I have ten boxes which amount to 100 more possibilities) of Fuji FP-3000B instant b+w film which produces 7 inch by 7 inch prints on my
Mamiya Rb-67 Pro-SD’s Polaroid back. The film is extremely fast (3200 ISO) and
the prints are free of noticeable grain. In this age of the scanner, these
prints reproduce quite nicely. But the excitement comes from the peel which for
some years I threw away (how could I have been so densely stupid?). These peels
as they dry (I help this along with a hair dryer) the peel manifests, quite randomly,
a shift from negative to positive in different sections of the image. This
looks like solarization but the correct term with negatives is the Sabbatier
Effect.
I have been reserving my boxes of FP-3000B
for special occasions and with special subjects. Nina my muse fits into that
both ways.
 |
| Willie Nelson - Annie Lebiovitz |
The two images of Nina you see here are:
1. A cropped (we wouldn’t want to show bits
here, would we?) Fuji
FP-3000B peel that once I scanned I reversed in Photoshop with some tinkering
of the contrast. The colour is the colour of the slightly blue negative peel
which shifts into the magenta upon reversal.
2. A cropped (cropped for the reason cited
above) print of Fuji’s
(still being made) 100 ISO FP-100C colour instant film. Note that I used the
Leibovitz lighting technique.
In the next few days I will be processing:
1. 10 images on one roll of b+w Ilford FP-4
Plus in 120 in which I used my Mamiya RB-67 Pro SD with lights and with
available light.
2. 15 images of a roll of Kodak T-Max 400
pushed to 400 which I took with my Leica III-F. I shot some with flash as this
was the first Leica with a PC connection so that I could mate it with my
portable studio flash.
3. 15 images with my Nikon FM-2 loaded with
Fuji Superia 800 ISO colour negative film.
4. About 20 images shot with my Fuji X-E1
digital camera.
Judging by the pictures so far my muse has fulfilled
her role splendidly!
