Monday, December 15, 2008

Portrait

What makes a good portrait? This is a question often asked, many answered, more didn't. Is it about the person in the image? The light? The composition? Chemistry between the photographer and the model? A bit of everything? Or not?
I made this image for a young model, Kate, using a new Sinar Hy6 6X6 camera fitted with a 33-million-pixels Sinar eMotion 75 digital back. The lens which helped capture this beautiful image is the well known Carl Zeiss 120/4 Makro Planar.
What makes a good portrait? Human is an emotional creature, the emotion inside the model's brain reflect on her face, story told in her eyes, subtle yet sensible change happening in milliseconds, photographer pressed the shutter at the moment it captures something, and often missed more. I made pictures for many people, often many pictures for each of them, it is very seldom many people like the same picture, in particular, often the model likes the picture different from the one picked by the photographer, but is it strange? No, not at all, at least I am used to it.
The neural system in our brain works so fast and we often did not know it actual works. We often look at a picture and in that instant, we might smell the person in picture, feel her skin texture, share her happiness, or her sorrow, or uncertainty. Or we like the jewel the model wears, imagine how will the same jewel on ourselves, and what is the fabric of her dress? How soft? Is she really look at the lens? Or she was trying to look thru it to find the eye behind the viewfinder? Or something? Too many things happened in the instant of image capture, and as many things happened at the instant that one looked at the picture.
So does it matter what makes a good portrait? May be we should not try to define such answer, or because the answer is already in each one's mind?

1 comment:

pkphoto said...

I recently discover your images and am so impressed by your talent. I recently obtained a Sinar Hy6 as well. I can't wait to experiment with the machine. I respect your work tremendously! You also have a cerebral sense with photography (with the mentioning of neural network of the brain). Well done.