How can you shoot portraits.. you’re blind?
Its a question I have been asked several times in the past few weeks. The simple answer is, I point the camera at my subject and press the shutter, just like anyone else would. The difference is that I don’t see what is in the viewfinder as clearly as as a fully sighted person. I see light and shadow, shapes and outlines, but no real detail. I have only one working eye so depth perception is also an issue. Both eyes have retinal damage and the lenses were removed from both eyes during surgery so I rely on what you might call “bottle bottom glasses” for what little clarity of vision I can eke out of my right eye.
The process of using the camera is very straightforward. I can see enough light and shadow in the resulting image to ascertain whether the exposure is close enough to what I am looking for. Working in manual mode all the time I can adjust speed and aperture, on their separate dials, by turning each in turn, and then seeing the effect on the resulting image in terms of its brightness. The wider I make the aperture, the brighter the image. I use a similar process with the shutter speed.
Adjusting ISO is a little more tricky but again I rely on trial and error.
The result of this is that I am never cquite certain of the shutter speed, so until I blow up the image on a large monitor, I am never sure whether I have frozen a sharp image, or whether I have inadvertently introduced movement blur. Its a much slower process than when I was fully sighted, and it has become somewhat of a hit and miss affair. It’s a hit and miss affair!
Once I have what looks like my desired exposure however, I can keep that setting and shoot several or more images.
So why if its this hit and miss do I create portraits?
I prefer portrait photography to any other kind. I love interacting with people. Having limits on my vision results in fascinating experiences, where I can’t see enough detail to read a person’s expression. It’s also practically impossible for me to asses the age of a person with any degree of accuracy. I have learned that the tone and timbre of a person’s speaking voice gives little indication of their actual age. I have often thought that the person speaking with me, was in her twenties, only to be told she was closer to sixty. Its amusing and confusing at the same time.
N
Most portrait photographers will tell you that your subject’s eyes play a major role. They are often considered to be the “window to the soul”. They are the feature which best expresses a person’s character, mood, life energy and more. Portrait photographers go to great lengths to make the eyes appear sharp, even striving to ensure that each eye contains a catchlight, that small dot of bright light reflected in the iris.
Success in this area is usually achieved by having the camera focus on the person’s eye that is closest to the camera. Setting the camera to display a single, rather than multiple, focus points, is often the easiest way to achieve this.. just point the focus point at the eye and “hey presto!”, the magic of autofocus will take care of it for you.
This is great if you can see the single focus point in the viewfinder, or have any sense of exactly where the person’s eye is, whether its open or closed, screwed up or off looking in another direction! Me? I can just make out the shape of the head.
So, how do I make it work? Well, I use a lot of memory and some very careful handling of the camera controls, i.e. I try to have the single focus point fixed in the dead center of the viewfinder. i imagine it’s there, even though I can’t see it. I am extra careful about not touching the controller on the camera that will move it to another position. Remembering that it should be in the center allows me to set my aim to try to place it where I think the person’s eye is, or rather I try to guess the likely position of the persons Ieye and place the imagined focus point in the center of the frame. Then? I just then press the shutter and hope for the best.
Of course it is somewhat easier if the person is not moving. It is certainly more of a matter of chance when the person is moving. I shot around seventy images of a street musician in Boston a few weeks ago. She wvas a very active violinist, who was constantly jumping around and moving very expressively to her music. Out of all those shots, only two or three were even close to being sharp.
Having spent years teaching photographers to reduce the number of shots they take. To think before pressing the shutter. To spend more time envisioning the shot and less time making multiple trial and error attempts,, here I am taking many more shots to get just one that comes even close to what I want it to be.
Thats the shooting process. There is however much more than the camera involved when creating portraits that magically capture a person’s character. Even the most technically adept photographer won’t det the best portrait of a person if she hasn’t taken the time and effort, to build a connection and comfortable rapport with her subject. For me, this is essential. I want the person I am photographing to give me their full and undivided attention. I need them to connect with me and be fully present, so that when I point my lens I have a chance to place my unseen focus point on their open eye, a better-possibility that they are giving me an expressive look, one that says something about their personality, character or mood. Without that well established rapport it literally becomes a shot in the dark.
Beyond the shooting process there is post-processing, of course, and here too there is a substantial element of chance.
With retinal damage and no lens in either eye I have a different sense of color. In fact, on screen images tend towards black and white rather than exhibiting their true color. Shadow areas show little or no visible detail. This all results in my images being processed in a way that often makes them garishly vivid and overly colorful or processed with highlights emphasised in a way that makes them appear overexposed.. Add to that the lack of ability to see any degree of sharpness in the deTail and I can end up producing images which look odd and fover processed. They do, however, look fine to me, and when all is said and done that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
What was once fast, you could even say intuitive and slick, is now very different. What was a sure and practiced art, is now a stumbling effort, riddled with chance and unexpected results. It depends on both my passion and my patience, which by no means make comfortable bedfellows. I often get frustrated with my inability to produce the kind of consistent quality I previously found possible. It’s the passion I have for people, for this glorious and precious endeavor , craft, art, call it what you will, that keeps me creating portraits. Portraits that I put out into the world in full knowledge that they are probably odd, quirky, out of focus, weirdly colored and which probably lean heavily towards the highlight end of the histogram . Its just how I see it, or rather, its how differently I see it. Is it a problem? Will I stop doing it out of embarrassment at the results? Hell No!
I’m just getting started!
Recent Comments