Complex And Sophisticated Lighting Effect Is This Photographer's Forte

An art form undergoing reevaluation is portrait photography. An artist whose work is currently being displayed at the Pittsburgh gallery tells us that his work is driven by his reaction toward the nature of traditionally being confrontational in portraiture. During his whole life of photographing portraits of individuals, he became sick and tired of the quick and careless way characterization is being done as a result of the smile please hold it thank you good bye technique.

This creates a point. There is a certain dullness in the media portraiture profession that people may not realize. It is in different settings that subjects in the photographs do different poses, and this is done on the photographer's orders.

To break this old tradition in this line of work, he proposes engaging the sitter in a more extensive way. To create the 13 portraits of people from Pittsburgh, collaborative work was done.

Sitters have the freedom to choose where they want the shot done, and can give other suggestions. This is not a common practice in the profession.

No preconceptions exist in the artist's head for any one project. A preliminary meeting is important in collaboration, and this is done to create a general concept of the photograph.

Aided by the sitter, he begins looking for a site that would work perfectly for them. A set, made to look a confined cell, is usually built with a steel sheet and mirrored glass box.

A sculptor decided on being seen with his own work in the photograph, while a writer chose to be seen in a bar scenario. The idea of bridges was presented, but in the actual photograph it seemed circumstantial.

He is able to create complex and difficult lighting effects in his photographs, which displays his great skill. These are not technical tricks added later in the developing and printing processes.

The effects of color created by the colored gels he uses with his lighting equipment are both appealing and saturated. The exposure times for these photographs are lengthy, almost Victorian, in duration. How long it takes to expose the nocturnal portrait of someone outside the bar is enough time to give the sitter to dodge in and out of the camera's range.

Afterwards, he could show up again with a wand of light and trace letters in the air which can be recorded by the camera. During the exposure, people went in and came out of the bar, and there was no proof on the film that they were there. Another set of pictures nocturnal and taken in the garden of a factory shows that simple lighting can produce desired effects.

He learned photography on his own, though he is very professional in his work. Collaboration may be sometimes difficult because he emits this aura of wanting to exert absolute control over his work.

The artist's final decisions are what reign in the end. On display are photographs that are reversal prints and which have been printed professionally.