Bobby Deal
New member
Well it seems it has been 8 months since I posted here at OPF and my last post was the sharing of a few examples of my first few attempts at Vintage Hollywood Glamour Portraits. I had just purchased an assortment of old Fresnel lights in various powers from 200 watts to 2000 watts and was attempting to wrap my head around the lighting styles of the 1930-1940's Hollywood Glamour Photographers who used the same equipment such as George Hurrell.
In looking back while I was pleased with the images created I can see the initial offerings were a long ways from authentic. After extensive study of the genre I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never faithfully replicate the style and output of 1930's Hurrell simply do to the equipment and capture methods I am using today. These portraits were originally shot with 1k-5k Fresnels 8x10 camera on giant camera stands with very slow film which was often red blind. The exposures were exceedingly long at very small apertures and the lenses were typically of the soft focus variety and retouching was extremely tedious and compulsively detailed even by today's standards..
While with the help of careful post production workflows the output results today can approach a very good approximation of the style true authenticity of the overall experience is unlikely.
Here are some new images that I feel show my growth in the genre. I hope you enjoy them
In looking back while I was pleased with the images created I can see the initial offerings were a long ways from authentic. After extensive study of the genre I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never faithfully replicate the style and output of 1930's Hurrell simply do to the equipment and capture methods I am using today. These portraits were originally shot with 1k-5k Fresnels 8x10 camera on giant camera stands with very slow film which was often red blind. The exposures were exceedingly long at very small apertures and the lenses were typically of the soft focus variety and retouching was extremely tedious and compulsively detailed even by today's standards..
While with the help of careful post production workflows the output results today can approach a very good approximation of the style true authenticity of the overall experience is unlikely.
Here are some new images that I feel show my growth in the genre. I hope you enjoy them