Chicks for Free 07760087

07760087.jpg Lee Cummings, a woman I met during my first week as a freshman at RIT. She was a ceramics major at the School of American Craftsmen, and I did a lot of stuff with her as a model over the years.

This is probably from 1968 or 1969, when I was learning to use strobes in a studio with LARGE surfaces for reflecting and diffusing the light. I was trying to get what I called "Flemish lighting", the kind of lighting you see in paintings by the Flemish Old Masters ... the diffuse light of a studio with windows to the North ... intense from one direction, but no harsh shadows or highlights ... never more than one catch-light in the eyes, because that was the first rule of portrait photography that I consciously violated.

We were taught to do yearbook style portraits ... one light on each side, one farther back (or less intense) than the other to provide fill illumination, and possibly a third light above and behind to make a "halo" and seperate the subject's head from the backdrop. The point was that "good" portraits had two catch lights in each eye, one larger/brighter than the other, and both above an imaginary line through the pupil, e.g., at 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock. The main light should make a triangular patch of brightness on the opposite cheek, i.e., the subject should face away from the main light. (This image breaks that rule, too. :-)

Anywho, my goal was only one catch light (and a bloody huge one at that!) with the fill illumination coming only from a reflective surface, e.g., a large white screen or panel, not a second light source. But my most important rule was, "Never shine a light source directly on the subject ... always bounce it off something, either a silvered umbrella or a wall/corner."

Compare this shot with couples/07390054 from 1975, and I think you'll agree that somewhere along the line, I finally nailed it ... nice single catch lights half-way between one o'clock and two o'clock.

Anywho, I lost track of her years and years ago, but every once in a while I try to contact her, with the intention of giving her all of the prints and negatives I still have of her from 25 years ago (the ones that survived the wrath of my first wife). Maybe I'll even make a page to collect my shots of her.

Virtual Water Holes HomePage Last update: 2008-09-06 by Dennette@WiZ-WORX.com