Author Portrait Shoot with Tiffany Calligaris

Tiffany and Shiku at home in Toronto.

Some of my favourite people to photograph are writers...I love collaborating with fellow creators, and love the idea of contributing in a small way to the creative process involved in the publication of their work. When Tiffany Calligaris first contacted me I thought she was reaching out from Argentina where she has spent most of her career, so I was relieved to find her living in Toronto. As the publication date for her newest novel approached she needed to do some updated publicity photos, one of which would be included on the book jacket.

I started off by dropping by her home to check out the background possibilities, because when the goal is several distinctly different shots that really speak to the person's 'brand' it's often worth checking out 'real' places that, ideally, have some relevance to the person, before opting to set something up in studio. Thus, I location scout whenever possible so I can 1) determine if there are suitable spaces to shoot in and decide which ones are the best, and 2) pre-visualize the lighting and set-up. Meeting at the subject's home gives me the additional advantage of being able to view and advise on wardrobe. 

Tiffany's condo is not huge but had a fantastic view, so we thought that would be conducive to an environmental portrait. Added bonus: I discovered that she and her husband have a very cute and very friendly dog, Shiku, who we decided would be a great addition to some of the shots. We also walked several blocks to a spot Tiffany had in mind as a result of her dog walks. It, too, looked perfect to me as the historical architecture was somewhat suggestive of the historical timelines in her books.

The corner I liked in Tiffany's condo, and the street corner I liked for our outdoors shots.

As we were well into the fall season, we had to choose a shoot date sooner rather than later so there would still be leaves on the trees. Unfortunately, fall can be an iffy time weather-wise, and this one seemed particularly unsettled. As the shoot date and back-up weather dates neared, we made a somewhat last minute decision to skip the preferred date and commit to the next day. Of course, I then spent the entire original date looking for signs that I'd picked the wrong day, and the sun did come out once for about five minutes. I was vindicated, though, by an entire morning of sun on shoot day...not for long enough that it shone the whole shoot, but of the two days we did select the better one.

Shooting inside to begin with we started by setting a base exposure for the outside and seeing how Tiffany looked in the position I'd imagined. After the shoot I actually ended up changing my mind about the outside exposure, but while I was shooting I felt I wanted lots of colour and detail in the fall-coloured cityscape. As always, we brought lighting so we'd have control, and compositional possibilities would not be limited by the level or direction of the natural light. We also spent a few minutes trying out a throw rug as a prop, but ultimately decided it was a distraction that didn't really add anything of visual value to the image.

Left: Setting the ambient exposure. Middle: Setting the lighting and colour balance. Right: Trying out a throw rug prop which we ultimately ditched.

Here are two final versions of the selected shot -- the first being the way I envisioned it at the time, and the second a revised version I did, really, to make up for the fact that I had not been able to place a background light behind Tiffany where I wanted to because there wasn't room (we tried). There's more depth and dimension in the revised version.

Left: The first iteration. Right: My revised version which has more depth. Note that the part of the window frame behind Tiffany's head (visible in the test shots above) was removed during retouching; its relative position during shooting was unavoidable, so I planned to remove it later.

We did do a wardrobe and set change while we were inside but time was tight, so we didn't spend a lot of time trying for alternates. Ultimately we needed approximately five final shots and we had to pack everything up to move to the outdoor location, so we did not dally.

One alternative look, inside.

The outdoor location was far enough away that we needed to drive there with the gear. While my assistant and I drove over, Tiffany and her husband Phillip took Shiku for a walk and met us at the agreed spot. My first goal was to capture Tiffany and Shiku walking. Because I knew I wanted to photograph them at a specific spot, we set up a light and had them walk through that spot repeatedly while I locked focus on it.

Once again, I would like to have used slightly more complicated lighting than we were able to. Inside we had no room. Outside, I had the limiting factors of of one assistant (to handle one light) in a high traffic area (way more so than we'd anticipated), and in which we had no permission to shoot, so we had to keep as low a profile as possible. As a result, although the shot looked OK, I felt as if something was missing, until I did a little extra post-production to give it a little zing.

Left: Encroaching cars kept wrecking the shot; there was much more traffic on the shoot day than on the scout day. Right: We got the shot during one of the brief moments during which there were no cars or people in the way.  

The final walking shot.

Thankfully it didn't take long to get this shot as the endless traffic was driving me crazy (no pun intended). So although I'd planned initially to keep shooting here, I grabbed just a few more shots before deciding to move onto the church grounds in the background.

Once I crossed to the same side of the street as my subject we no longer had to deal with the traffic but the sun went behind the increasing clouds, not to be seen again. Between the clouds and the wind it was not warm, and Tiffany was wearing a light little jacket, not actual outerwear. Phillip took Shiku home so we could concentrate on the task at hand, which, for Tiffany, was mostly trying not to look like she was freezing to death.

You would never know Tiffany was freezing.

Tiffany had told me when we met initially that she would welcome my direction during the shoot, as she, like almost all of my subjects, is not a professional model and not especially comfortable in front of the camera. By putting her trust in me, she set the stage for us to successfully create a set of shots in which she looks comfortable, relaxed and confident. I have to applaud her, too, for her commitment, patience and perseverance. It was not easy posing outside in the cold, but you'd never know it from the pictures, and she uttered not a word of complaint. I found out later she'd needed a hot bath to thaw out, and fell asleep right after that!

Tiffany's newest novel Lesath Ever After is scheduled to hit shelves in March 2019.

Whether you are publishing a book, a website, a blog, etc., please get in touch if you want to look great on it!

kathryn@hollinrake.com
hollinrake.com

New Portable Backdrop for Corporate Portraits

The photographer against KHPhoto Background 1

Every time I speak with a new client about corporate portraits or headshots, the question of what background to use arises. Even though a portrait is really about the subject, the background is important. In some cases, for example when a large number of subjects within an organization are to be photographed for a website or directory, the desire is for a conservative, innocuous, repeatable, fairly plain backdrop, so the portraits will look clean and consistent across a page. But plain white and gray backgrounds can be boring, and look cookie cutter-ish.

Environmental portraits are very popular these days and for good reason. For one thing they tend to be a bit more interesting looking, and eye catching...very helpful if a potential employer and/or potential business contact is scanning through resumés or online profiles.  Furthermore, a portrait that looks like it was taken in some kind of real place, as opposed to a portrait studio, invokes a greater sense of authenticity, and uniqueness both in terms of the individual subject and of the organization they are representing. But...

The challenge from the photographer's point of view, when shooting on site at clients' offices (which I do 90% of the time), is finding office space that is conducive to an attractive environmental portrait. White and beige walls provide no texture or detail to throw artfully out of focus. And, if there are windows at all, often whatever is visible through them does not work very well as a backdrop either. It is amazing how rare it is to find an available environmental background that really works. Just recently we set up a portrait in a large office and included part of a plant, some wall, some window, and some interior design details (see photos below), and when the executive walked in for his "close-up" he announced that he really did want a close-up...all the lovely out of focus details in the background disappeared with the tight crop we were now facing. As a result the background looked boring and not very attractive, so I ended up digitally compositing in details to bring the shot back to life -- time consuming and not billable.

Left: Aesthetically pleasing environmental background for a horizontal portrait. Middle: The "close-up" vertical portrait the client actually wanted.  Right: Digitally altered, improved background in the final portrait.

Even in my studio, I am limited to using photo backdrops because I don't have a big beautifully appointed boardroom to simulate an executive environment...so I needed something I could use in studio as well. 

Like every corporate photographer I have paper (plain) and fabric (fairly plain) backdrops I bring on location, and there are a variety of mottled fabric photo backdrops as well as environmental image backdrops available for purchase; however the dearth of options that I actually like or would expect clients to like has frustrated me for years. In the past I painted many of my own backdrops, but they look dated now, and they can be unwieldy to take on location. Recently it got a lot easier and more economical to digitally composite in a different background using Photoshop, but doing that adds time and expense that may be tough to justify, especially if you are doing a large number of portraits at a time. Furthermore, if you have a bunch of portraits on a page and the backdrop looks exactly the same, to the pixel, in each one, they fairly scream "Photoshopped!" (and "inauthentic"!). Having said that, I do have a growing collection of digital corporate backgrounds ready for compositing into portraits. And yes, one can place the background just differently enough in each frame that they do not look cookie-cuttered, so if budget allows, we have the technology and the resources!  

A few blurred background digital files in my archives

Client photographed on white, background added later.

But back to my point: it was important to me to figure out a way to provide a more manageable, flexible, and economical solution. Having suitable backdrops custom made was not a very reasonably priced option until now.

My goal was to create a backdrop that suggested some kind of structure in the background, out of focus enough not to be distracting or identifiable, and generic enough that it would be appropriate for a wide ranging clientele. So I selected one of my digital background files, took pieces of it, and blurred and combined them to simulate a distant background. I used a combination of experience, and a bunch of tests, to determine the amount of detail, texture and blur needed to make it appear not too busy if I included a subject's torso (looser crop) or too plain if I did a tight head shot. 

It also had to be vertical (unlike the digital backgrounds above, unfortunately!) to allow for easy portability and use in the often narrow spaces we encounter in boardrooms (beside big boardroom tables for example), and for flexible placement of the subjects who may be sitting or standing, and short or tall. All tough to balance, which is part of the reason I leapt at the chance to do a two-sided backdrop, when I discovered I needed to redo my order, having screwed up the first time by making the colour saturation too intense.

Even the new one is still actually a little bluer than I would maybe have liked -- it doesn't look nearly as blue to the eye, as the reader will see if we work together -- so I will likely be spending an extra few seconds desaturating these backgrounds as I use them on upcoming jobs. As I write this,  I just completed a shoot with four business women. Three stayed with the blue, and one chose a slightly grayer look:

3 portraits against side 1 of the blue background

1 portrait with the blue desaturated during retouching

Me x 15! My new 2-sided corporate background showing variations made possible with lighting, processing and cropping. A large-enough-to-read version is available by e-mail upon request.

Realistically, I don't think clients want to have to think about backgrounds. They want great, appropriate, usable portraits. It's my job to figure out the details. So far clients are responding enthusiastically to this new backdrop, which makes me very happy. I'm looking forward to using it lots more, and to designing new ones going forward. I'm also considering offering custom designed backdrops for exclusive use by individual client organizations. If that sounds useful, or if you are in need of portrait photography, let's talk!

kathryn@hollinrake.com
hollinrake.com