Portraits on White

NSI

Cancercare

Two different clients, two different applications. But both have people on white backgrounds.

These were shot slightly different, different angles, lenses and the Cancercare images are tweaked up for reproduction in newsprint.

In was in between these two jobs I was reading about reaction to Platon's appointment to The New Yorker Magazine.
The magazine used to use Avedon. So some of the reaction was that Platon wasn't a big stretch. Both have made careers shooting people in B&W on white backgrounds. Why couldn't they have found someone else?

Shooting people on white backgrounds is something I do a lot as well, but it's never boring. Shooting people on white is like playing blues or jazz. In blues or jazz you have the basic song structure, the basic changes, anenabling someone to explore things in their solos. In my case, the basic structure, the white background, is always the same, maybe a slight difference in lighting or angle, but what makes it different is the subject. Everyone has a different story to tell, reacts different to the camera, it's never the same way twice.
If you've shot a lot of portraits like this, you appreciate the subtle differences every photographer brings to this set up.

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