Last week, I did a studio photoshoot with Caroline, the model pictured above. For part of the shoot we were experimenting with very high contrast fashion images which I converted to black and white.

In all of these pictures I used just two lights, each at about 90 degrees to the line of the camera. The colors versions looked fine, but I really preferred the black and white, as the bright whites and dark shadows came out more prominently. In a few places there are “blown out” highlights, where the area is so bright that all detail is lost. Usually this is to be avoided like the plague, but to my eye it works with what we were trying to accomplish here.

In the image below, it may be hard to see, but one of the nice details is the shadow of her earring on her cheek.

How do these images strike you? As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

Thank you, Caroline, for your patience – and hard work – on our shoot!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

Today, I received a beautiful note from the mother of these terrific boys. The note was a true joy to read but also very humbling for me. Here’s what she said:

Blake recently did a photo shoot with my two boys, ages 12 and 9.
He made them feel at ease in front of the camera right away.
Blake has a wonderful gentle way about him that immediately calms all of your fears and makes you feel secure.
He makes you feel as if you are the most important person in the world at that moment, and that he has all the time in the world to devote to making you look great in that shot.
Blake is a uniquely compassionate and warmhearted man and an amazing photographer.

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

Last week, I had the pleasure of shooting again with my friend, Wilhelmina, a very accomplished ballet dancer and college freshman. (I read “freshperson” in a novel last night – is that really a word?)

 In the images above, we just used one light, fairly harsh, for a more dramatic look. Usually in the studio we are trying to avoid any shadows, but in these images it’s part of the design. With Wilhelmina up on the balls of her feet, notice how the shadow starts sharp below her feet and becomes softer on the paper “wall” behind her. Another “shadow” shot below:

 It’s great fun for me to photograph dancers – either on stage in a theater on in the studio.  Many thanks to Wilhelmina and her mom Cynthia, who assisted on the shoot, for working with me on creating these images. As always, your comments and reactions are most welcome.

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

The timeworn cliche about family pictures is the capturing of “Priceless Family Memories.”  A cliche to be sure, but true, as I learned again this holiday season.

Thomas (the dad in the image above) works and lives in Hong Kong. He only gets back to the States about every three years. Two sets of grandparents were in the area as well. He wanted to get some images of the three generations – eight people.  Because the grandparents were getting on in age, he wasn’t sure when, if ever, he’d be able to get photographs of the the whole group.

While we took pictures of the eight of them, I’m just including here Thomas’s immediate family.

With this terrific family, and with others I shot for holiday cards and a few small events over the last couple of months, I’m reminded again of how precious these images can be. Kids grow up fast, the world moves quickly, we’re all in a big hurry. A series of family pictures can stop time for a moment, to be recalled again and again in future years – and in future generations. Priceless, indeed.

Is it time to take pictures of your family?

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

Last week, I shot for the second time with my friend, Nicky, a college student and aspiring model. We did several concepts, but this post will focus just on the headshots. For the shoot, the hair stylist and makeup artist was the very talented Joanna Kirchon.

In the first image, the main light was a beauty dish, positioned over the camera, pointed down at about 45 degrees. In this second image, the light was above and to the left, and I asked Nicky to look right into the light. Shown below is the black and white version.

I’m always a little surprised at how different the feeling is in the color and black an white versions of the same image. Perhaps by now I shouldn’t be! Sometimes the color one works better, sometimes the black and white. Which one appeals to you more?

Nicky and Joanna had come up with the idea of the purple eye shadow. The photographer, who tends towards classic and conservative looks, wasn’t sure. But the idea grew on him – and now, having edited and retouched the images, he likes it very much! More and more, I’m trusting the instincts of my models and makeup artists.

Here’s one more, looking into the light:

We took a lot of pictures – over 300 over the course of the day. It was hard to pick out just a few headshots to show in this post. We’ll include one final image below, a profile with a slightly more contrasty lighting setup.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

This image is from a recent shoot with Kaitee, an actress, a model and, in her spare time, half of a two-girl electropop band that plays gigs at New York clubs several nights a week. Whew!

Before you read any further, I’d like you to just spend a few minutes looking at the image. How do you respond to it? Does the picture interest you? What works and what doesn’t in this image?

A few words about portraits. If the head is centered, and everything is squared up to the camera, it’s not going to be engaging for the viewer. Even when I’m shooting corporate headshots of several people where a consistent look is required from one image to the next, I still try to get some interest from a turn in the head or having the shoulders at a slight angle.

Here are a few of the things I had in mind with Kaitee’s portrait:

1) The two-tone background. I was aiming for a look similar to window lighting. To the right, I used a big light source with two silk “scrims” to filter it, to provide very soft and flattering light. The black is just a foam-core board. I used the two separate backgrounds, one to frame her head and shoulders, the other one, her hands.

2) Hands. I often try to get a subject’s hands into a portrait. Occasionally I get a little push-back on this idea (not with Kaitee), but I find hands can be very expressive and revealing of a person’s character.

3) The turn of the head. I purposely asked Kaitee to close her shoulders and then turn her head towards the camera. One interpretation is that she was looking out the window and then she turns to face another person.

4) Color. I liked the almost graphical nature of the setup here, and the color scheme – there are really just 4 basic colors – yellow, black, white and red.

5) Lighting. I set up the shot so that the light would wrap around Kaitee’s face, from light to dark tones, to add three dimensionality.

6) Angles. The edge between the two backgrounds is perfectly vertical, but all of the other angles – her head, the line of her hand and wrist, her shoulders and arm, are all slightly off line, to provide a bit of tension and interest. 

7) Expression. I asked Kaitee to look directly into the lens and, without coaching her, waited for a somewhat enigmatic expression. If we look at a portrait and are not quite sure what the person is thinking, our imaginations can take us to a lot of places – a good thing!

8)  Simplicity. There was a fair amount of planning – and intentionality – to this photograph. But I still wanted to keep the whole composition fairly simple and straightforward. .

Now that you have read what I was trying to do with the image, what do you think? As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

Photographers – and those who look at photography -  argue endlessly about the editing and retouching of images. Last week, another article appeared in the New York Times about it which you can read here.

How much retouching is too much? It’s too much if the retouching is obvious. Really, it’s too much if you notice the retouching at all when you first look at the picture. In my editing work, I try to make the client look as good as possible, while still looking like him or her, and while still achieving a natural appearance. I use a very light hand in editing.

Recently, I did a photoshoot with Monika, an experienced and beautiful model. One of the images from our shoot appears to the left, just as it came out of the camera. I wasn’t sure whether to select this image as one of the dozen or so I would edit – out of more than 200 headshots taken. But something intrigued me about the image (despite the somewhat unruly hair!). I liked the expression and also the hand and fingers framing the left side of the face. After playing with several options on cropping, I decided to crop in very tight on the face. This completely changed the feeling of the image.

From there, I made lots of mostly small changes. Just a few of them:

1) slightly lightened the entire image

2) increased contrast by lightening the lights and darkening the dark tones.

3) slightly enlarged the right eye (on the right as we look at them) to match the left one. Monika’s eyes are even but the tilt of her head led to an optical illusion that the right one was just a bit smaller.

4) brightened and added sharpness and color saturation to the eyes. took out a few very small red veins. lightened the area under her eyes.

5) closed a very small gap between her lips on the right side of her mouth.

6) trimmed the hair in the upper right and brightened the background white.

7) removed blemishes from the skin and softened some of the shininess from the studio lights. (Skin retouching is very tricky and you definitely don’t want to go too far – your subject will look like Barbie.) I left the natural lovely texture of her skin intact.

8)  removed some stray hairs, such as the one coming down over her left eyebrow towards the left corner of her eye.

I spent over an hour editing this one image. here are the before and after versions:

When you meet Monika, your first impression is that she is beautiful and would likely never need retouching of any images of her. There is something that changes in our perception when we look at a live person versus a photograph. I’m hoping to learn more about why this happens. Perhaps when we meet someone, we are each talking, moving, responding to each other’s body language, etc. and just take in a general sense of their appearance. When we look at a photograph, we don’t have the sound of the voice, the movement, the changes in expression to respond to, so we’re immediately drawn to the details – and any possible “imperfections.”

I believe my “after” picture of Monika is actually a more accurate representation of what she looks like in person like than the “before” image.  Some minor distracting imperfections are taken away so that you are left with an impression of her true appearance.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

It was a cold, rainy, gloomy day. Surely the program would be cancelled. But no, we went ahead; I’m glad we did.

Philip Johnson’s Glass House, in New Canaan, CT, is an icon of modern architecture. I’d visited and photographed it several times before. On Wednesday, we photographed it in less than ideal conditions. The Glass House runs occasional “En Plein Air” days, for artists to come and paint, photograph or even write poetry on the beautiful grounds. This time, it was just my photographer friend, Sally, two guides, and me.

One of my photography mentors gave me very good advice some years ago. If you wait for perfect conditions – the right subject, the right weather, the right time of day, etc. – you’ll miss a lot of terrific shooting opportunities. Instead, he said, take in what is in front of you right now. Be receptive to the idea that a great photograph can be made of a “dull” subject or on a dull day. At The Glass House this week, I stood under my umbrella and just studied the house and the landscape. Slowly, I became aware of the beautiful muted colors and imagined Mr. Johnson sitting in his house on such a day looking out at the same views I was seeing.

I liked the image below because the two women were framed by the two willow tress beyond.

 In this image, Sally checks her camera settings – and provides a sense of scale for the house.

Aside from the Glass House, there are several other buildings on the site that Johnson designed, including this one, which has no straight lines in it.

Last Fall, I photographed The Glass House in very different weather. See some of those images here. Do I like shooting on a clear day? Sure. But I cherish the opportunity to take pictures in any kind of weather. Here’s one of the images from last Fall. As always, your questions or comments are welcome.

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

341 Studios is designing Cesco’s website, and these images and others from my shoot will be used on the site. The website will be up soon – but don’t wait – give them a call at 203-202-9985 and make your reservation for lunch or dinner soon!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

Last Friday, I photographed a charity event, for Circle of Care, a wonderful organization that provides support to families of children with cancer. HP Hood, the milk company, presented a check to Circle of Care. Hood’s spokesperson for the evening was Chris Evert, the tennis legend. Chris is pictured above with Liz Salguero, Founder and President of Circle of Care.

I had an opportunity to chat with Chris Evert for a half an hour or so before the event. She’s a wonderful person and took a genuine interest in Circle of Care and the stories of the people who started the organization and those they care for now.  And, she was very patient with me as I photographed her with various guests at the event, always willing to pose for one more shot.

After the event, I looked up a few of the highlights of Chris Evert’s tennis career. She won 157 singles tournaments, including 18 Grand Slams. Her career wins/losses record of 1309-136, a winning percentage of 90%, is the highest of any man or woman in the open era. Whew!

Here are a couple of other images from the evening.

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.