Question regarding Yousof Karsh

[jnantz]

jnanian: "she didn't have a large studio, it was pretty small ...
she used a background light, a hair light ( on a boom ) a key and fill."

I think that this may help put some perspective on the terms "large" and "small". By my standards, if you have room for a boom light, keylight and fill, you are in a large studio!

(I would SO like to have even an eight-foot ceiling.)

harold

her shooting space was about 8' x10', and maybe 8' ceiling ...
in the arcade building in providence ...

yeah, i guess you are right ...
but it was by no means a warehouse

---john

[Harold_4074]

John:

I don't mean to imply that it can't be done, and in fact I have managed it (rarely!) myself. It is just that from seeing Karsh's work in the books that I have, it seems that he was using fairly long lenses and pretty dramatic lighting, and both of these are a lot easier to manage when the walls are not in the way.

For someone (such as the original poster!) thinking of attempting Karsh-style photographs for the first time, I suspect that a sufficiency of elbow room will go a long way towards compensating for any shortcomings in lighting equipment, etc. (For getting that marvelous silvery look to the skin, it seems that there is nothing quite like a Fresnel spot.) Barndoors and/or a gridded reflector make good key lights, but the source has to be far enough away to cast distinct shadows, and light that spills past the subject and hits a wall has to be managed as part of the fill light.

Allow me to rephrase an earlier comment: I would SO like have the skills to make dramatic portraits in an 8 x 10 x 8 foot room!

[Don Wallace]

Karsh shot in 4x5, 5x7, and 8x10. I had the rare privilege last year of handling some of his original negs. On one of them, an 8x10 of Marshall McLuhan, he used a technique that I had never seen before. An older photographer in this forum explained it to me. He scratched something out of the neg, perhaps some dust, and painted over it in a red ink that would not show in the enlargement. It was pretty cool.

[Robert Brummitt]

Get his autobiography.
"In search of Greatness" Reflections of Yousuf Karsh.
Read page 100 on. He discusses his equipment and film. But, he main thread is understanding light. Look at master painters. Study their use of lighting.
Karsh was a master of lighting.

[Tintype Bob]

Stop worring about what Karsh used or how he did things, just get out there and photograph, make your own mistakes and learn from them. Then use them to make your OWN style

[cjbroadbent]

Well Eitan stimulated some interesting replies.
In the seventies, we looked askance at Karsh. most of us abhorred hair-lights, back-light, fill and key and ridiculed the famous Kodak lighting manual. The verb was One Source. Maybe because we had trouble learning how to control hard lighting.
Now some of us know better. Karsh did quite simple but non-standard things with hard lighting. I think he took risks, even with great sitters. That's what makes him inimitable.

[Turner Reich]

You need a Calumet C1 and a Kodak Commerical Ektar 14" lens.

[Paul Kierstead]

Although it is quite clear that Karsh was a master of light and technique, I'd have to say that understanding his subjects and how he interacted with them is what made his pictures truly brilliant.

[Phil]

Karsh 100 - A Biography in Images opens tomorrow at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston.

http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.a...15&subkey=5726

Sept. 23, 2008 - Jan. 19, 2009