Darkness and Light
“Is the picture going to be that dark?” Mom says as she leans close to the monitor. “Why does my face look so dark on that side?”
“It’s called Rembrandt lighting.” I say as I point out the small triangle of light under her eye. “Named for the famous Dutch painter. It’s an artistic portrait style that has been popular with Hollywood and Portrait Photographers for a long time.”
“Well.” Mom huffs. “I don’t like it. It’s too dark.”
“No problem. We can take another one.” I take her back to The Camera Room and shoot a flat lit portrait with no shadows. She liked that one much better.
My favorite portrait photographer was a fellow named George Hurrell. One of his most famous images is Jean Harlow laying on a Polar Bear Skin Rug. He once joked that the pose became so popular that he had to go out and buy one of the rugs. Being a Hollywood Photographer, most of his props were things he found on the giant sets and back lots of the Golden Era Movie Studios.
George Hurrell never met a light he didn’t like, and many of his images are a mad confusion of darkness and light. He used Hot Lights, not Strobes, this was not easy work. He also used an 8×10 View Camera and did extensive retouching on the negatives to make his Subjects look like porcelain sculptures.
Assembly Line Portraits are also made with light and darkness. The harsh lighting preferred by Hurrell has gone in and out of fashion, with more people liking a flat, even lighting these days. The Ring Flash has replaced the many points lighting setup of the Good Old Days. Assembly Line Portrait Studios have trained whole generations to believe that an even, shadowless image is a good portrait. Fashion portraiture is also big on total and even illumination, but that is mainly because they are showing off the clothes and the jewelry and not the person playing manikin to them.
Having been inspired by the works of George Hurrell I have incorporated a few low key shots with strong narrow and broad lighting-meaning that most or all of the light falls on the front or side of the Subject’s face. This gives a good modeling effect and brings out the shape of the face. Converting these images to Black and White further enhances the old Hollywood Style of the portrait. I usually add one such shot to each sitting-it’s a love it or hate it kind of shot. Some people just don’t understand that the strong shadows are intentional and they think the Photographer has made a mistake.
Some Photographers never vary the lighting, as they don’t like to do that much work. My own method of changing the lighting involves nothing more than picking up the light and moving it closer or farther from The Subject. The lights I work with seldom have the fancy controls that allow the lights to be adjusted with the flip of a switch. But I tend to favor moving the lights even when I have the gee-whiz systems-I might forget to re-flip a switch, but I will notice that light sitting three feet from where it normally sits.
George Hurrell and the other Hollywood Glamor Photographers of the 1930s and 1940s would use as many lights as they could-and working in a movie studio meant they could use Lots of lights.
As a portrait photographer, I can look at a portrait and see light patterns, the shape of the catch lights in the eyes, and the general lighting scheme. I can make rough guesses as to how an image was created, though to be honest, Photoshop has made this a much tougher task than it used to be. But The Hollywood Glamor Shots are often a mystery as to just how they were created. Clearly there was a lot of light used, but what kind of light? How many lights? How far away? How large? Re-creating these old shots is a matter of hit and miss-and finially just making one that looks as close as possible, but seldom one that looks identical, to the orginal shot.
My own favorite Hollywood Style Portrait only uses two lights-a Main Light (an Umbrella) and a Kicker Light (a bare bulb blocked to just a two inch slit). The Main Light is 45 degrees to one side of the Subject, about three feet out and about two feet above the top of their head. The Kicker Light is about two feet from the floor, three feet from The Subject, and pointed directly at the Main Light. This casts a bright light on one side of the subject’s face and a dark shadow with a thin splash of light on the other side. It’s a simple shot to setup and has been a consistent seller for me over the years.
Thanks for the inspiration, George.
And the Flat Lighting? Put two umbrella lights directly in front of the subject, one over the other and shoot from the gap between the top and bottom light. There are, of course, as many ways to light subjects as there are photographers-I like the simple setups and they work with my Assembly Line Portrait equipment.