(Talk me out of) offering people at scenic tourist site to have their LF photo taken

Maybe I will use strobes someday, but these are retro photos using exactly the technology that would have been typically used in the 1940’s. The lights with stands were only $100 new so it makes business sense as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What is the point of the exercise?

Is it a personal quest to make a great photograph?

Is it an attempt to make money?

Or, to put it another way, are you trying to make something or get something?

I think that there is an opportunity to make a great photograph if you compose a set up with beautiful light and a strong linear composition and then just wait for people to step into the picture for a portrait.

I would be very surprised to hear of a non-famous photographer making noteworthy profits today shooting analog portraits, considering the cost of the equipment, the setup, film, chemistry, travel, and time. The price one would need to charge would be so high that no one would sit for a portrait. An exception could be wet-plate, maybe, but judging from what Garrett wrote above, it sounds unlikely.

For myself, I enjoy the process. It also occurs to me that I now have several friends whom I met out and about making portraits of strangers. I don’t charge anything ever, but I don’t offer proofs and I only print what I love so that I retain control of my output. This way, I’m not working for them and I can make things look the way I want them to look rather than trying to please a customer. But that’s just me.

Everyone has to find their own path.

Cameron Cornell
Washington State
www.analogportraiture.com
www.instagram.com/papacornell

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ironage

Maybe I will use strobes someday, but these are retro photos using exactly the technology that would have been typically used in the 1940’s. The lights with stands were only $100 new so it makes business sense as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

---

Many of those used a focusing spotlight, not a pair of floods. And, with a pair of floods how will you control the lighting ratio between them? Different distances? That will change the character of the light. Different wattage bulbs? Diffusion over one light?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ironage

Maybe I will use strobes someday, but these are retro photos using exactly the technology that would have been typically used in the 1940’s. The lights with stands were only $100 new so it makes business sense as well.

---

You could keep the reflectors (presumably they have ES sockets) and use the cheap(-ish) high CRI video-lighting fluorescents. They are perhaps not truly perfectly daylight balanced, but they will be more comfortable to use and much cheaper than a box full of photofloods.


Edit: I mean this sort of thing (illustrative only, I have never used this particular seller)

You can move to Afghanistan and have that as a business: :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18-5xaVfhR8

Check Joes camera:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgviRWHatzM

“Cuban Polaroid” is ultra-low-tech camera, darkroom all in one