19.05.10
David Cantwell: Black and white portraits
When professional photographer David Cantwell decided to take a black and white portrait of a friend, little did he know he would soon embark on a quest to photograph some of the great photographers of the world. Sean Samuels finds out more.
It’s not every day that photographers chance upon a great idea. Nor is the evolution of that idea then straightforward. For David Cantwell, a simple portrait taken in his studio of retired fashion photographer and friend Ricky Stevens was the first step on a road that would take him around the world photographing artists such as Greg Gorman, Oliviero Toscani and Gered Mankowitz.
“When I photographed Ricky, an ex-president of the Irish Professional Photographers Association, I thought it would be great to photograph all the ex-presidents in one group to mark IPPA’s 60th year. From here, I thought it would be fantastic to capture the great photographers of the world because, at that time, I had never seen a collection of their images.”
After having this realisation, David was soon on a plane to America to photograph the legendary Greg Gorman and it was in his studio that the project took yet another direction. David started out in photography 20 years ago working for a wedding, portraits and commercial studio, which is where he learned to shoot classic portraits. His initial approach to this project reflected that.
"I started out with very tight headshots of the photographers. It was much more about recording the face. When I was in Greg Gorman’s studio, his assistant asked if I was just going to do a portrait of Greg. What I realised then was that I could have shot that in my own studio, so this had to become about Greg, his space and where he is.” David noticed there was a wall in Greg’s studio with skylights that let in an amazing light. Greg used this area to photograph people such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Johnny Depp against (see page 39).
“So I did this very wide shot of Greg in his space and that was what changed the direction of this project and what made me realise this project has to be about the photographers and not about me and my ability to take a picture. It had to be a story about the photographer in their space with little personal things in each picture that say something about them.”
This has made the whole experience much more exciting for David because until he meets the photographer, he has no idea of the picture he is going to come away with. The only certainty for him is that the image must convey a connection with the subject and that the portrait tells a story, that it is emotive. This is a difficult but important thing to get across, which David achieves by looking at people’s mannerisms, looking at the things they do naturally. He wants friends of his subjects to look at his pictures and see the person they know.
“Something a photographer said to me as he was looking at the prints was that it looks like they all trust me. I hadn’t thought of that before.”
Prior to taking the image of Gered Mankowitz David was not aware of his work, but once he started researching the people he wanted to photograph, he realised Gered had made the iconic image of Jimi Hendrix, which you can see on the floor in the doorway behind him. “I thought I was going to visit a rock ’n’ roll photographer, so I was wearing a skull and crossbones T-shirt. As it turned out, Gered is an English gent and this image is not what I had imagined before I got there. I thought I’d like to photograph him in his archive room, but when I got to his house and started talking to him, I realised I wanted to include elements in the image that mean a lot to him.”
Look closely at the image and you will see a book underneath the telephone. This is a book of The Rolling Stones when Gered was on tour with them. It is one of his favourite books. The little statue behind him came from his brother’s antique shop, which Gered took from the shop after his brother’s death. The award on the table is the only award Gered has ever won. “I know each photographer is going to have a different look, so I don’t have a set of boxes that I tick. When I’m chatting with people, I am also watching them all the time to see if they have any quirks I can use. Gered had a way he held his hand up, which I promoted him to do.”
David believes the key to successful portraits is to be confident, but not cocky. He has attended directors’ courses to learn how to deal with people. “You have to be very aware of the reactions people have to the things you do on a photo shoot and know if you are pushing it too far. You’ll know when people are excited by something because they change their demeanour. It may be something you’re talking about or comfortable with.”
The shot of John Minihan on the stairs (see page 38) was taken as David was leaving the photographer’s home. He had already captured the image of John in his study (see page 35) in which every book title in the background is visible, as they play a big part in John’s life. “On the way out I saw this beautiful light coming down from the top of the stairs. As I continued to speak with him, I realised the personal touches in this space. He loves religious statues and the poster on the wall was for one of his first exhibitions. So I had him stand there. He looked down. This was something he did himself, I didn’t tell him to. I took the shot. It felt right.”
While David doesn’t know what image he will come up with, he knows he only has a short period of time in which to come up with the goods. In the weeks following this interview, David photographed Oliviero Toscani. At the time of speaking with me he was very excited because he had just an hour and a half with him to get the perfect shot with absolutely no chance of a reshoot. With David’s background with film, he doesn’t like to shoot a lot of frames. If the shot’s in the bag, it’s in the bag. He just knows.
“There’s a moment when you press the shutter and you know you have the shot. Something happens; you just get the feeling for it when you can see everything has come together. Shooting transparency has helped me develop a sense of when exposure is correct, because with transparency, if you don’t get it right, it’s gone.”
Today, David shoots digital and shoots RAW, but he maintains two rules. The first one is to not be lazy and to do as much through the camera as possible as he would have done with film. The second rule governs post production and knowing when to stop. He wants his prints to look like they could have been shot on film and that major retouching has not been done. “RAW is very forgiving; even afterwards you can do so much. I have the control later if I need it. But it is very important to get it right in the camera first. RAW is not to get photographers out of holes.”
David shoots all his images in colour and then converts to black and white in exactly the same way Greg Gorman does (see page 39). He has set this process up as an action in Photoshop, allowing the software to go through the steps in layers, leaving him with control over contrast and levels. “I think it’s the best conversion to black and white there is. It’s so controllable and the quality is amazing. Because there are so many ways to convert to black and white now and because prints are not made in a darkroom anymore, I don’t feel people coming into this industry today know what good black and white images should look like. I’ve been a photographer for 20 years and know what I am trying to achieve. I am trying to get that authentic black and white look which is beautiful tonal range with details in your blacks and details in your whites.”
Black and white suited the nature of this project for David. It defines the era in which many of the photographers he has captured first made their names, and for him, it is where photography started. An aesthetic understanding of what makes a good black and white image is important, but a command of the technical side is not what makes a good portrait. This is achieved through confidence and an understanding of human nature. The greatest compliment your image can be paid is if someone close to the subject can say you have truly captured the person’s spirit.
What's in your kit bag?
- Canon 1Ds Mklll
- 45mm shift lens
- 50mm F1.2 lens
- 3x Dedolights
- Stands
- Barn doors
How photographer greg gorman converts from colour to black and white
The following technique for converting colour RAW files into black and white images was devised by Greg Gorman. David Cantwell now swears by it, having set it up as an action in Photoshop. At the click of a button, the software goes through all the steps in layers, leaving David with full control over contrast and levels.
1 Open a colour image in Photoshop.
2 Under your Actions palette, pop out Menu, select New Action.
3 Name the action ‘Black and white conversion’.
4 Assign a function key such as F1 to your action.
5 Select ‘Record’.
6 Under the Image menu, select Mode>Lab colour.
7 Click (highlight) the lightness channel.
8 Under the Image menu, select Mode>Greyscale (discard colour information).
9 Command click on the grey channel (to load the selection).
10 Under the Select menu, choose Image>Inverse to select the shadows.
11 Under the Image menu, choose Mode>RGB colour.
12 In the Adjustment Layers palette, choose solid colour.
13 Select a colour from the colour picker or from the Swatches palette (which I prefer because you can save a custom colour).
14 Your choice of colour should be based on the tonal range you wish to see in your final toned black and white.
15 Go to your Layers palette and change your blending mode to Multiply.
16 Because your colour fill is on a layer, you may adjust the opacity to dial back the colour that you desire.
17 In addition, you may add a curves or levels adjustment to achieve the desired contrast.
18 Should you wish to change the colour of your black and white ‘duotone’, simply double click the colour fill and reselect the colour.
19 Create a new layer.
20 While holding the Option button, go to the pop-out menu and select Merge Visible.
21 Change the blending mode to overlay.
22 Reduce the opacity to 20%.
23 Choose filter-other. Then select-high pass. Set radius at 50 pixels.
24 Double click the new layer to bring up Layer Properties.
25 Bring the black point arrow in to 70. Option click the black point arrow to split them, pulling one half of the arrow back to 50.
26 Bring the white point arrow in to 185. Then Option click the white point arrow to split them, pulling one half of the arrow back to 205. Click OK.
27 If necessary, the opacity may
be varied to reach your desired adjustment.
28 Under the File menu, select Save As and choose your file and location (for example, Desktop>New Folder> Black and White Conversions).
29 If you choose not to flatten your file at this time, you may be able to change the tonal and contrast adjustments to different settings in the future, if desired.
30 Close your file.
31 Stop your action in your Actions palette.
32 This completes creating your action and assigning a function key. All that is necessary after opening a colour image in Photoshop is to press your function key. All your fine-tuning adjustments may now be performed on the individual layers as desired.
This feature is from the May 2010 issue
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