I love the simple portrait/headshot. I would be happy to shoot faces every day. Old faces, young faces, tired faces, happy faces, sad faces and more. The human face has so many facets of interest.
When we are very young, we learn to recognize faces. Mom, Dad, siblings…
Faces become our way of understanding our universe…
Later we learn that faces can convey emotion. Is dad mad? His face will show it before he makes it known verbally. Is your boyfriend breaking up with you? It’s written all over his face. We see fear, arrogance, acceptance, love, rejection and nearly every emotion known to us – on the human face.
But for me, it all happens in the eyes.
This portrait above is an excellent example.
On the left we have a pensive look that has lots of different emotions tied with it. On the right side we have a nice smile, but the eyes are not selling me that the smile is real.
It isn’t a terrible shot, but it is not as expressive as the shot on the left. It is a ‘smile’ shot.
We learn to smile when we are very young. We smile when people compliment us, or have something nice to say. We smile when we meet people at business meetings that we are less than excited to be involved in. We smile at strangers who smile at us.
The smile becomes ubiquitous… it’s everywhere, and most of the time it is not sincere. It just isn’t.
It’s contrived and involves the arching up of the mouth and a bit of cheek… but the eyes tell the truth. Eyes have to tell the smile and that is more difficult than the simple mouth smile thing.
Eyes are windows to the soul, at least the inner voice. And if the inner voice is not a real smile, then it is prominently displayed in the eyes.
I see fake smiles everywhere. Fashion, glamour, beauty shots that are so close, and yet there is no connection. Or at least not enough connection to the smile to be that believable.
And we feel it when we see the image. I know that because when we see an absolute smile, we instantly can recognize it as something genuine. We see real smiles in the real world too… and we know the difference. In smiling, it is usually something that we do TO each other… we make it obvious.
But few times do we have engaged, pensive, inquisitive and emotional faces engaging our attention with such directness. Usually these emotional faces are not sent out to strangers. They are reserved for more intimate relations.
And it is why I think the face on the left works so well. We see something in that face, that look, those eyes that we usually don’t see. At least not when confronted directly on by the subject.
I shoot a lot of photographs when I am doing portraiture with a small camera. I keep the patter going, constant and consistent positive reinforcement for the model to relate to. I push and cajole and tease and direct… but all in a way to get them to let their guard down for an instant. That’s all I need for a click of the shutter to capture that rare moment.
I shot this on a Canon with the 100MM lens. A very large softbox to camera left, and a very large reflector board on camera right in very close. This light with the tight in reflector means the subject can move left to right without getting any shadow complexity. The ‘fill’ is nearly as bright as the main, so either way they turn, they remain well lit.
I rarely want my subjects to stop moving. Professional models and talent can understand what I need from them, but amateur subjects will tend to stop and wait for the click. I will keep them moving as best I can, and look for those moments where it all lines up. And all the while, I am watching the eyes at every turn… watching how they start to relate to me and open themselves up a bit.
So sure, I like good smiles, and love to shoot them. I will post some real smile shots and discuss how I got them someday. But for me, it is the face that is more open, without the veneer of the smile, that is most interesting.
At least at this point in my photography.
Yesterday’s post: “Shot Under Moonlight with a Touch of Streetlight for Kicker… ahhh, Kodak 3200”
See you soon.
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