ten minute portraits
ten minute portrait sessions shot with the pentax 645n: loukas mexis, panagiotis gavriiloglou, nikos maliakos, thodoris kanellopoulos, vicky kaya, stella kasdagli, fiona halpin, natasa mavropoulou.
I have been shooting more "stand-alone" film portraiture in the past months, since the small size and easy operation of the pentax 645n has made quick portraits a lot easier. this 6x4.5 camera is small enough to fit in my photo bag without compromising the rest of my equipment, and medium format film provides exceptional results in all lighting situations. you can easily finish a roll of 16 frames in the space of, say, ten minutes, and be sure you have got at least a couple of good portraits.
all of the following images were shot in february/march 2014, with the pentax 645n and the 75mm/f2.8 lens. film used is noted under each image. no post-processing manipulation.
loukas mexis | writer / journalist | kodak t-max 400 (pushed to 1600)
panagiotis gavriiloglou | journalist / writer | kodak ektachrome e100sw
nikos maliakos | photographer | kodak ektachrome e100sw
thodoris kanellopoulos | journalist | kodak portra 160
vicky kaya | model / creator of fashion workshop | kodak portra 160
stella kasdagli | journalist / writer (ithelamono.gr) | kodak t-max 400
fiona halpin | model (fashioncult) | kodak t-max 100
natasa mavropoulou | actress | kodak tri-x 400
loukas mexis
a ten-minute portrait session: loukas mexis and my new pentax 645n medium format camera.
a ten-minute portrait session: loukas mexis(almost two years after the shoot me photoshoot)
all images shot on medium format film with a new kid on the block, the pentax 645n.
[pentax 645n | smc pentax-fa 75mm/f2.8 | kodak t-max 400 push-processed to 1600 ASA]
shoot me (one last click)
...photoshooting the cover of a book about... a photographer.
about a month ago, my good friend loukas mexis asked me to shoot the cover of his new book, shoot me (one last click) - a book about a photographer, his bike, gold, guns, girls. we discussed a bit about possible approaches, and we settled on using the "item focused in the foreground / person out of focus in the background" style. the item on the foreground would be a yashica electro 35 gsn, magnificent little camera, and the one that the main character of the book is using. good light was necessary, so we opted for an early saturday morning shoot by the seaside. loukas couldn't do it, though, 07:30 feeling like the dark ages to him when he tried to wake up, and we had to reschedule for the afternoon - loukas went back to sleep and I stayed awake, feeling stupid, since I don't have the gift of being able to go back to sleep easily.
in the afternoon we set out for mavro lithari, a beach about an hour away from athens. when we arrived, the sun was falling and the light was sweet and warm - the time frame we had was one hour, maybe one hour and a half. I tried some digital shots with a tele lens but they were coming out flat, so I switched to medium format. I loaded up the bronica sq-a with some expired kodak ektachrome 64 tungsten film and went really close with the 80mm/f2.8...
...we tried several different poses for the front cover but in the end the first one was the best, one hand on the camera, a hint of the face in the background. then I had to give some thought on the back cover, so I tried some back shots...
...the first roll was over, and I loaded up a kodak portra 160 - I wanted to use a normal film just to make sure I would get some properly exposed images, knowing that the cross-processed results of the kodak ektachrome would be somewhat unpredictable, so I did some front-cover frames again, which came out with totally normal, boring colours...
...then I tried some photos of the bike, not being sure about the design of the back cover...
...the light was falling fast, I was feeling that the job was over, that I had the images I was after, but I wanted to make the best out of the lighting situation, so I loaded up another roll of expired ektachrome 64t and went for the extra promo material...
...the sun had disappeared behind the nearby hills, I had two frames left and I decided to finish them off with some tight portraits - the first one with an eyes-in-the-camera approach and the other with an eyes-in-the-distant-light-source approach - loukas preferred the first one since he felt that the second one was "like a portrait of a communist leader"...
...during the whole photoshoot we were thinking that the book cover would be a full colour photograph, but it ended up as a collage of different black & white photos taken from various photostories that appear in this blog (heartless, time machine, the last good day of the year, alight)...
...while the back cover featured the bike photograph and the first portrait was used on the sleeve - I very much preferred the "great helmsman" portrait but I understood that it wasn't suitable for this particular purpose.
the book presentation took place on the 20th of june - you can see photos from the presentation on the book's facebook page, you can see the video trailer on the book's web page and you can buy the book online at captainbook.gr and other similar websites.
