Pressing on with the portrait nostalgia roadshow! Images featured in this post are from the same session as the previous blog post. Mixing studio with more environmental portraiture is always fun. The model was also an aspiring singer and hoped to use some of the images for promotion as well. This was a bit before social media was such a thing.
I originally processed all of these as black and white. At the time I considered myself a “black and white photographer”. Still do, mostly. But I have incorporated color into my workflow more.
I find myself in the midst of a bout of nostalgia. Reasons for it are obvious to me but beyond the scope of this blog so we will just cut right to the chase. I have a fondness for portraits. My initial motivation for getting involved in photographer was of two parts; an interest in the black and white photography as practiced by Ralph Gibson and others, and an interest in portraiture as practiced by Irving Penn and others. I make no claim that I’ve quite gotten to where I’d like in either milieu. However, I have come farther than when I started.
Recently, I re-processed some portraits from several years back and that started an entire thing so that now I’ve gone back about ten years and re-processed some of the older portraits I’ve taken knowing what I know now.
Of course, this exercise is concerned only with processing. The mistakes in lighting, exposure, and posing are…indelible. You can’t really save a photograph from mistakes of that nature. So, limited in scope but still of interest, to me at least.
Wrinkled shirt…how you vex me.
My choice of color palette has become more sedate.
Originally most of this set was black and white.
After this walk down memory lane, that will take up a few posts here, I’m thinking of capping things off with some very recent portrait work. Though by then my interest may have careened off on an unexpected trajectory.
Feel free to leave a comment or ask me (nearly) anything if you have a mind to!
Just a quick post today after a rather lengthy hiatus. Some color and black and white photographs of tulips to get us back into the swing of things. These particular images will be going up for available prints at both sites for prints by me; this one and this one.
For some, abstract photography presents difficulties. Possibly they struggle with the “why” of abstract images, what they are meant to signify to the viewer. Personally, to me, the abstract photograph is about taking the subject our of its context. Looking not only at what it is, but what it also is, what interest it holds when taken for its form and construction outside of its obvious context.
DESMOND MANNY PHOTOGRAPHY 