Pages

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

John Singer Sargent Might Have Drooled







Photography has been in my blood since I was 16 years old. I never felt I wanted to play football, baseball or any other manly sports. In short I was a wimp of a young man who became a fairly good portrait photographer.

I can safely say that I have never wanted to own a motorcycle, grow a beard or a mustache or buy a red Miata when I achieved middle age (I opted for something worse a Maserati Biturbo). I have never really liked beer or to drink just about anything else. In short I have never sought manly things. No, I do not know how to tie a bow tie.

Ancillary to this is that whenever I have spotted a beautiful landscape or noticed a glorious sunset I have chosen to snap it with my brain's camera, its memory. It never runs out of batteries and exposures go beyond 36.

Today I took some portraits of Caitlin Legault. When I took this one I knew I had a good portrait. I believe that American painter John Singer Sargent would have been quite excited at having Caitlin pose for him.

In my search for the real skin tone I set my Fuji X-E1 to 5800 Kelvin. Alas somehow the camera went back to its automatic white balance without informing me and the resulting pictures taken with a studio flash came out so warm that to more or less take them back to some sort of normality I had to add 50 cyan and 40 yellow. It is the resulting odd colour that I think conspired in my favour.