Week 8 of Don Giannatti’s 8 Week Portrait Class, the last but in no way the least, brings this course to an end with William Coupon.

New to this series of posts? Catch up on the previous weeks using the following links:

Week 1: Victor Skrebneski

Week 2: Yousuf Karsh

Week 3: Sarah Moon

Week 4: Peter Lindbergh

Week 5: Herb Ritts

Week 6: Jeanloup Sieff

Week 7: Dan Winters

What a great artist to end this course with! We hope that you have enjoyed following our journey as much as we have enjoyed finding inspiration from these amazing artists.

Week 8: William Coupon

Look at Coupon’s body of work and his style will be quite apparent. Take his studio work and there it it, unmistakable: very simple lighting, and painted backdrops adding texture to his images without ever being the star of the image. This simple style allows a very intimate connection between the viewer and the person in front of the camera.

Spending some time in Coupon’s website, it can be seen he loves telling the story of human beings – either in tribes, or as a society, he always has something to say in each of his works. Although he has indeed photographed for Time Magazine covers, and has work of all the presidents since Richard Nixon, what most drew us to his work was that of his tribal collection.

Technically speaking, the use of a single light source off to one side, without fill lights or cards, creates a pronounced fall off both on background and subject – which never seems to be a concern, as it ads an air of mystery and intimacy to the image. Tone-wise, Coupon’s colour images are mostly earthy and warm.

Our Takeaways:

Here’s a list of what we set out to do, based on Coupon’s images:

• Using backgrounds to create a texture and a tribal feeling in our images.
• To use one light source to direct the light across the image, keeping warm tones throughout.
• To tell a story using only the subject’s expression.

And here are the results:

Tribal feeling – Red background

We placed Iana in front of a deep red backdrop, being careful not to let it light up too much. The “feeling” of red, more than the open colour, gives a powerful impact to the viewer. We chose a low camera angle, looking up at Iana, to convey a feeling of stature.

Warm Tones:

In the next images we swapped  the backdrop for a less forceful, more earth tone colour, and used a warmer overtone in post production. A higher camera angle, together with direct eye contact, brings Iana closer to the viewer.

Storytelling

In our final image of this series we wanted to tell the story of “The Protector”. We again used a lower camera angle to convey a feeling of dominance, typical of a feline character, poised and ready to spring into action. Once again, Iana gaze goes off to the side, looking at things that are out of our vision or forethought.

We really hope that you have enjoyed these 8 weeks – we certainly have. Feel free to leave your comments below.

Oh… and be sure to come back in a couple of weeks, as we’re just gone and signed up for Don’s second portraiture workshop! 😀