How do they do it?

[olho]

As a compliment to my other thread about flash/lighting specifics, I was wondering if any of you had inside knowledge, personal certainty or educated guesses about how certain other photographers use LF for interior portraits. I'm looking to shoot some and have lighting issues. It'd be great to shed some of your light on this list.

1. Bruce Davidson's East 100th Street project.
He says "Each day I would appear on the block with my 4x5 view camera ... and a powerful strobe." How does he manage to get such consistent natural lighting and such decent depth of field? Almost all of the interior portraits are sharp from the subject to the wall.

2. Alec Soth.
Both Niagara and Sleeping by the Mississippi have great interior room portraits. He must blast some flash, but it's imperceptible.

3. Stephen Shore.
Similar to his student Soth I should imagine, though the interiors are fewer and their setup looks more natural.

4. Tina Barney (pre lighting setup)
Nowadays Barney uses a full studio lighting rig and a couple of assistants, but she can't have started that way. Some of her early work looks like it's all-natural light and there's good blurring to support that theory. I'm really interested in her technique as she often has her subject moving (or at least appearing less static).

5. Robert Polidori
I feel his exteriors carry his work (especially in his Havana project), but there are many interiors including some interior portraits. Does he use any lights I wonder?

6. August Sander
Let's go back to basics. Sander can't have carted around modern strobes. Maybe he just instructed everyone to "hold still". In German of course.

Any insights into other LF interior portraitists would be great to know too...

[Frank Petronio]

People really can hold still for 1/4 sec. sometimes. I can get 1/15th no problem. With a f/5.6 lens and 400 ISO film, that is doable with minimal added light in many interiors. The lastest photos on my website of the models are all done straight up in that range @ f/5.6.

A lot of the togs use mention are only using existing light, they are just using it wisely.

[Harold_4074]

Not familiar with the work that you refer to, but a trick that was very useful years ago was to point a hammerhead strobe as close as possible to the light fixture in the middle of the room, using the old rule of dividing the guide number by the total distance from flash to ceiling to subject, and then opening up one stop. The light then looks (more or less) like ambient. The same trick also works with the flash pointed up under a lampshade, sometimes...

A long (preferably coiled) sync cord is needed, but the pros I learned from back then insisted on always holding the strobe out and up at arm's length, so the cord was a necessity anyway. Using flash like this puts the shadows below and to one side of the subject, so in some cases it looks very much like natural light.

If I can find some examples to look at, I'll see if any of this seems to fit.

[Jan Nieuwenhuysen]

Don't write off working with available light before you have seen the work of Bert Theunissen (http://www.bertteunissen.com/).
On the info/links page where he describes (about halfway down) what his Domesticated Landscape Project is all about.

I work exclusively on 4x5 with available light myself. It's all about the quality of the light, not the amount. In addition to what Frank Petronio said about exposure times: the problems are in the 1/4 - few seconds range. Every little movement will be registered. During long exposures, say 10 seconds and up, a small movement like the blinking of an eyelid will simply not be visible on the film.
Be sure to use a heavy tripod / head or weigh it down. And yes, it is a good idea to tell your subject not to jump about too much...

I have come to appreciate the reciprocity characteristics of Fuji films (both color reversal and B&W Acros).

You can take a look at these portraits here (http://www.nieuwenhuysen.nl/verslaving) on my site, from my 'Addiction' series (book and exhibit). These are all taken on location by available light only. The locations (some are taken indoors some outdoors) are not visible because of my consistent use of a wool felt background cloth to isolate them from their, often miserable, surroundings as my goal was to bring out their human dignity, not their misery.
Anyway, it might give you another idea of how portraits in- and outdoors can be made with available light.

[olho]

Great. Thanks for those comments. Ideally I would stick to the ambient light. Bert Teunissen is a very good link and I know about him as he has his show on at the Photographers' Gallery at the moment. His format is closer to what I am thinking than any on my list bar Tina Barney. Both Barney and Teunissen have both the interior and the natural look. Bert Teunissen's subjects are quite posed and static though and part of his project remit is the ambient light. Good stuff to go on I think.

Your Addicts series is good too Jan. A little different than my own intentions, but proof, as you say, that ambient light is enough. How long would you say a typical exposure is? I presume your direction gets the subjects to hold their position. They still retain a less static look given that.

I'm also very interested in the light fixture idea. That sounds good to me. Well worth some experimentation. I need to take the plunge I think. So far I've been using Polaroids only, and not in a real setting, but I need to bite the bullet, buy a Metz gun on eBay and plunge in with real film. I'll see what happens with all ambient light too.

Any other insights, or good examples of others' work would be most welcome. Thanks so far for the replies.

Mark.

[domenico Foschi]

Olho,
I don't know if you use Color or B?W.
Sometimes the interior portraiture can be a problem in B/W, because of the limited latitude of the film, something that can be allievated with some N- development.
I have some 500 watts hot lights where I have fitted dimmers that can help in situations where the lighting can be a problem.
In my opinion, Sanders was also using hotlights in some instances,but I believe that most of his tuning was in the printing stage.
I have seen many of his images where the density of some areas were thinner than others(especially faces) which to me spells a lot of dodging.
I wouldn't underestimate the power of Minus development.

[dietcookie]

Wow, thanks for posting Bert Teunissen site. His images have spectacular color. I'm almost tempted to ask what kind of film is it, but I'm sure it's all in the lighting!

[Frank Petronio]

Some people just like to use a single soft, low wattage fixture to pop people out of the background, and set a flood or two to wash against the background.

You can do a lot of flexible movement on location portraiture by simply bouncing a light off the ceiling off to one side of the subject, at least if the ceiling isn't in the photo. A lot of $$$ annual report photos have been done this way.

IMHO, a big Metz is probably the worst tool to use for this stuff. It is impossible to tell what you are doing with it without doing a ton of test shots (digi or Polaroid) which really kill the spontanity... at least a monolight has a modeling light if you must use flash. But a big plastic potato masher is like using a sledgehammer with your eyes closed...

The technique I always wanted to try was what Neil Selkirk used to do -- using a 2.8 Rolleiflex with a Kenyon Gyro for 1 second long handheld exposures. That's the nuts ;)

[C. D. Keth]

Try reading up on lighting techniques for motion pictures. I routinely go into locations and bolster the natural lighting with the goal of taking footage that doesn't look "lit." It's tricky, but can be learned. You have the added bonus of not having to worry about camera movement...at least not the same kind ;)