Customer Reviews

Faces: The Creative Process Behind Great Portraits

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Working without artificial lights and with a manual camera, Jane Bown over a long and distinguished photojournalistic career has taken many great black and white portraits on location of the famous and once famous. The natural lighting she uses is terrific and often dramatic. Don't let the lofty title "creative process" intimidate you. Bown has very little time (often 15 minutes or less) on her assignments to do much complicated planning. Most of her "creative processes" are actually her instincts and experience built on many years of shooting portraits under similar conditions. She shows what can be done without a lot of fuss, dinkering with lights and backgrounds, and all the other trappings of a studio portrait or a sophisticated on-location shoot.

Jane Bown has produced a book that is essential for all portrait photographers with a leaning to Black and White Photography. The book has given me a greater understanding of lighting and techniques more than most other publications and short courses that I have previously undertaken. The simplistic manner she has in producing portraits is to equal people the like of Lord Snowdon, David Moore and Yousuf Karsh. This makes her to me one of the finest portrait photographers of our time.

Raymond Horsey
Gladesville NSW
AUSTRALIA

What impresses me about Jane Bown's work is its simplicity. She relies on a human connection with the subject, her own sense of timing, and a handful of elementary strategies for making use of available light. The result is a body of work through which the personalities of her subjects shine directly and clearly. If you like to make portraits, this book is a worthwhile read.

I love this book. You can read Mike Johnston's review at the http://www.photo.net/mjohnston/column27/