Older Portrait & Fashion
Click on a thumbnail to see an enlargement. Most of the pictures are smaller than 100K.
Priya
I took some pictures of Priya when we both worked together at the same firm. These photos were take in 1995. Priya basically hasn't gotten her hair cut since then, and it's quite long and beautiful now.
From the very first set of pictures. A lot of the white sweater
pictures worked out well. As the shoot went on, both Priya and I
got tired. The last couple rolls of film (out of 12 total) produced
very few usable pictures.
Another white sweater photo. I didn't like this one that much at
first--in fact, I didn't bother to scan the print for literally years--but
I'm liking it more and more. I'll probably do the same sort of pose
again in the future.
Another white sweater photo.
The dress was green and unfortunately showed up on the film in
the exact same shade as Priya's skin. It looked like she was
wearing a skin-colored dress. I used an orange filter (the only one
I had as a gel) to separate them. Priya is actually quite dark (see
the other photos), but looks practically white in this picture. I have
another frame with Priya in the same pose but smiling, which looks
a lot better than this one. Unfortunately I scratched the negative
during processing, a big scratch, right through her face. Bummer.
This photo was inspired by an advertisement in a copy of the
French edition of Marie Claire magazine. Yes, I buy the women's
mags for the photos!
Melissa
One of my sister's friends from high school. I took this photo and
the rest of the set in 1994 with a 33-year-old Hasselblad 500C
that I owned for about a week before returning it. I wasn't real
impressed with it. It was hard to focus, and the back had light
leaks on the sides, which is why this photo looks like a vignette. I
didn't test the shutter speeds, but they seemed to be in the
ballpark. After I returned the Hasselblad, I bought a Bronica
SQ-Ai, which has been my medium format camera ever since. I
used a spot meter with a grey card, but I mistakenly told Melissa
to angle the card toward the sun, so most of the pictures wound up
underexposed. Oh well, live and learn.
Eddie and Chris
Eddie (left) and Chris (right) were two students from Columbia
University who responded to my advertisement for models on
Usenet. They wanted to be actors and need headshots. I think that
the pictures came out very well, at least in part because the models
were quite photogenic. Eddie could give me that
spontaneous-looking smile on cue. As far as I know, they used the
shots for their glossies, but I never saw the final products.
Vernon
Vernon was another person who responded to my Usenet ad. I
was pretty much experimenting with the lighting. I wasn't altogether
unsatisfied with the result, though the shadow under his right (the
viewer's left) eye in the photo is annoying.
Neal and Ling-ru
Two friends of mine. I asked them to pose for some photos. These
were my first photos with the Bronica. I could have done a much
better job than I did. I took the pictures in direct sunlight. Now I
would put them in the shade or (probably more likely) use a
reflector to fill in the shadows.
Kelly
A real blast from the past. I took this set of pictures when I was 15
or 16 years old. Kelly was an acquaintance from high school. I
bought a black felt backdrop from Fabric Land, borrowed a set of
photofloods from the school, and took the pictures with my
Olympus OM-PC. I had no idea what I was doing at all, so it was
pure luck that the exposures were generally correct. Kelly wore a
bikini top for one set of pictures, but when I processed that roll, I
accidentally washed the film in scalding hot water! It was ruined. I
was crushed.
Last updated November 19, 2001