Classic Posing 101: Thanks to Don Blair
He was one of my very best friends, but even five years or so after passing away, he’s still a huge part of our industry. That’s the wonderful thing about people in our lives with huge personalities – they achieve immortality by their presence, their passion and what they taught us. Don Blair’s (”Big Daddy”) lessons were timeless. It seems fitting to utilize a little scanning technology and bring you a few of his easiest quick tips for posing and lighting.
The book we did together became known as Body Parts, but the full title was Don Blair’s Guide to Lighting and Posing Body Parts. The idea for the book actually came out of one of his programs. I was sitting with Bambi Cantrell, John Solano and Jay Goldman in the back of the room at one of Don’s seminars at WPPI in 1997. Bambi made the comment, “There needs to be a book on this stuff!” That’s all it took and six months later Don and I were working on a book project together.
We shot all the images in Las Vegas because we wanted to launch the book at WPPI. I knew if we used models from the Vegas market we could get the same models back when we did the program to launch the book. So, with help from Terry Deglau at Kodak and Tony Corbell, who was working with me at Hasselblad then, we locked ourselves in a suite for three days and simply shot, image after image.
Over the next few weeks, I can think of no greater tribute to “Big Daddy” than to share some of his basics and pull a few excerpts from the book. Here’s the first installment with one of the easiest to fix in a bridal portrait:
Arms of the Bride
It’s natural for the bride to hold her flowers up high, simply because it feels right. However, the challenge is the “carpenter’s T-square” and the harsh angles in the photograph.
Look at what happens when Don simply added a little elegance to the image by having her lower the flowers below her waist.
Tip: Let the hand farthest away from the main light or closest to the background hold the flowers. Then the hand closest to the camera becomes the show hand.
Instant elegance in the portrait with the removal of the harsh angle of the bride’s elbow and a light turn.
Lower the show hand a little more and start to show a little of that classic “S” curve and the look and feel of the portrait is completely changed.
Here’s the challenge for you diehard PJ shooters – sooner or later you’re going to have to do a traditional portrait. Your client is going to ask for it and you’re not going to know what to do. My words from the Foreword of Body Parts, twelve years ago are just as valid today:
“The challenge in professional people-photography today isn’t whether or not you’re a photo-journalist or into classic portraiture. It’s meeting the mindset of your clients. Dean Collins once said, “Beauty is in the eye of the checkbook holder!” Keep your clients happy and your business will grow.”
If you’re looking for some great programs to expand your adventure into classic portraiture check out Michael Taylor, David Ziser, Clay Blackmore or Tim Kelly, just to name a few great instructors out there.
I’m not trying to make you into classic portrait artists, but you might as well learn to do it right and these are such easy points to remember. The whole premise of Body Parts was dealing with Mother Nature’s challenges, from eyeglasses, long necks, short brides and tall grooms, you name it, we did our best to cover them all.
So, here’s the question of the day, what’s your biggest challenge when doing a portrait?
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This post has 5 comments
September 9th, 2009
Skip, celebrating 20 years of running our studio has been a blast,but there isn’t one day that goes by that I don’t use something from Big Daddy! Every time a customer says Wow, I look pretty good, I stop and think, if I didn’t have some of that classic training I would be missing the art of photography. Thanks for the reminder.
September 9th, 2009
Hey Skip Great tribute to Don Blair. I learned a great deal from attending Don’s classes. And as far as I’m concerned, classic portraiture will always be in style. And in my book, Clay Blackmore is still one of the best classic portrait shooters (And teachers) out there.
September 9th, 2009
Don Blair was one of those rare people who wandered into my life at just the right time. He was an awsome teacher, and never stopped learning. As one of his favorite “neices” I held an honored position, and was and will be forever grateful for not just the education but more importantly, the real, unadulterated, unconditional friendship. He was never too busy. I am so lucky to have had the honor of working on one of Don and Skip’s books and the experience is still one I take out of my box of memories when I need a good hearty laugh.. especially Don doing a posing demo on the use of hands in front of 800 people, with a model that Skip sent him by mistake who only had seven fingers!
One of the most valuable lessons I learned from Don was that you don’t have to personally adapt the style of photography of that specific teacher to benefit what they’re teaching you. Don was Traditional to the bone, and I’m not so… but concepts are concepts and at the end of the day, even though I don’t use a blue background or any painted backgrounds for that matter, the language of photography goes far beyond hotlights and backgrounds to that of people. That was Don’s gift to all of us…A love of people, not people in the abstract, but people as individuals, as one..as me.
Bambi Cantrell
(Don’s favorite Neice)
September 9th, 2009
i’m a bit behind the curve and just found this site today. it only took reading this one post to love it. thanks for putting this together Skip.
to answer your question, my biggest challenge when doing a portrait is composing and lighting large groups (ie huge bridal parties), especially in dark churches or after the sun has gone down.
thanks for always looking out for us little fish Skip. have a great week.
September 9th, 2009
Ah from those wedding poses, someone who knows… the gentle touches that make the hands; lines look SO much better. Yea as a portrait major at Brooks Institute back in the day, we know.