It may sound strange but sometimes we, as photographers, try just a little too hard to be creative and can end up producing pictures that say more about ourselves than our subjects.
I may have been slightly guilty of this when I recently photographed the multi-talented Frédéric Beigbeder, french author, critic and celebrity (amongst a dozen other acheivements) for Radar magazine.
I had this idea that I wanted to portray his fizzing energy and somehow retain the reflectiveness that I strive for in my portraits. So I purposefully shook the camera on a long exposure to make wild shapes with the ambient light while holding my subject motionless with flash.
Here are a couple of the results.
Here are a couple of the results.
From a colour perspective I really like the mixture of strobe lighting mixed with the very warm tungsten on the extended exposure. The Camera movements were intentional but slightly random and hard to predict where the light was going to wash into Frédéric himself.
Maybe this one is has more stillness to the pose and more reflectiveness but it wouldn't hold a page and Radar went with the frame above...
Frédéric himself was very patient through this slightly unpredictable process although he did think I was having some kind of medical episode when I first started shaking the camera around! He was very cool about the whole session and much funnier in real life than he appears in the pictures.
PS. I would appreciate any comments and opinions as to whether these shots work or if they are just a bit too contrived...
