Lights! Camera! Personality!
The Karsh of Ottawa Collection
Очень интересная подборка информации о Карше с иллюстрациями:
“To record the human spirit, human soul”
To improve his skills, Garo encouraged the young apprentice to study great masters—Rembrandt, Rubens, and Velasquez. Karsh enrolled in art classes, but since he did not exhibit any abilities as a painter, his teacher often asked him to help with supplies and set-up. Arranging still lifes and draping models, Karsh learned more than to draw; he became aware of shades, contrasts, and the lighting that shaped the subjects…
…most of all, he developed his own style characterized by masterful lighting, almost exclusive use of studio equipment, and careful development and retouching, all of which allowed him to achieve the goal that he set for himself while under Garo’s tutelage: “to portray, to interpret, to record the human spirit, human soul.”
Lights
Of all the technical aspects of image taking, Karsh was the most interested in lighting. Although it is likely that he used some light units at his uncle’s studio in Sherbrooke, Karsh started to experiment with artificial illumination in Ottawa in the early 1930s.
(Fig.10)
Foyer of the Ottawa Little Theatre, 1933; watching the illumination of the stage during theatrical productions at the Ottawa Little Theatre, Karsh became fascinated with artificial lighting, and began to experiment with the application of lighting units to photography. (Courtesy J. Fielder)
John Garo worked only with natural daylight, which dictated the rhythm of life at his photographic studio. The daylight not only determined sitting hours, but also limited the ways in which subjects could be positioned. It affected the atmosphere during the session and influenced the outcome. Karsh, however, found artificial lighting fascinating and challenging; he wanted to master it, and make it work for him. He was particularly interested in stage lighting, and learned new techniques watching his first wife Solange direct plays for the Ottawa Drama League. Throughout his career Karsh consistently employed artificial light in his studio and on location…
Just before the session was to start, when all the lights were set up, Karsh would come to examine the stage. He tested the set-up with his assistant posing as the subject, and would often rearrange the lights. He might switch the main and fill units around, with the main on the left side, and the fill on the right of the sitter, or he might remove the fill light altogether. He might turn on one spot light, or keep both off during the entire session. The final set-up of the lights always depended on the atmosphere of the session and the mood of the sitter.
Karsh was ultimately interested in the humanity of his subjects. He wanted to depict their souls, not their accurate appearance, and used the lights to achieve this goal…
http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/e ... karsh4.cfm
Cameras
Karsh donated nine of his cameras to the Museum, including his principal 8×10 Calumet, and the Calumet from the New York studio, a Graflex Graphic View, two Gowlandflex cameras, a Cine-Kodak, a Plaubel Peco Universal III, an Olympus, and a Polaroid…
Ignas Gabalis рассказывал Дыхявичюсу об очень высокой стоимости заказа у Карша. Вот такой пример к этому:
Karsh was, foremost, a portrait photographer, but sometimes he accepted commissions from large companies for promotional photographs. …
He placed a high price on this service. For a two-week session in 1951, Karsh charged Ford of Canada a $10,000 fee, when the average wage of a Ford factory worker was $1.33 per hour…
http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/e ... karsh5.cfm
Retouching Tools
Karsh always developed and retouched the master print himself; he was very meticulous. He processed negatives in batches of ten, in film developers made according to his own formulas. He used Kodak products to desensitize the film to a very low level of green light, and then used the light to inspect the film periodically as it developed until the negatives reached the density levels that Karsh desired, and could then be removed from the developing solution.
At Garo’s studio in Boston, Karsh learned the bromoil, platinum, and bichromate gum processes—the development techniques that brought up subtle elements of the image, including contour, depth, and hints of texture. After he left Boston, Karsh no longer used these techniques, but instead developed the photos on a Kodak paper called Opal V. He chose the paper carefully. It was perfect for portraits, as the texture of the paper was similar to the texture of human skin. Moreover, Opal V was coated with a matting agent containing very fine silica or starch, which shifted the light reflection from pure creamy-white to a tint of blue, making the portrait printed on this paper truly unique.
Karsh liked to do all the finishing work himself. His retouching tools included various inks, spotting colour sets, brushes, pens, and pencils, with Steadtler and Koh-I-Noor leads. Karsh employed these tools to soften and accentuate lines and shadows on prints. He also used a set of retouching Turquoise Prestomatic pencils ; soft pencils produced a greater density of fine lines superimposed on each other, while harder pencils formed less visible light shading on the final prints. Among the retouching tools donated to the Museum is a custom-made glass blade with which he sharpened lines in negatives, a technique learned from Garo. When retouching photos, Karsh used a magnifying glass to examine the effects of his work.
…The gold toner was Karsh’s signature, as few photographers chose to use it. It was expensive and had to be applied at just the right moment to coat and replace silver salts, but the resulting gold-toned prints had a special warm and rich “archival” look.
http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/e ... karsh7.cfm
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