I interviewed Zionsville, IN based photographer and portraitist Tom Casalini a few days ago. In Part 2 of my conversation with him he talks about going digital, advantages of working in a studio instead of on-location, working with families, and selecting the final images and presenting them to the client.
Portraits
4
Aug 10
A Conversation with Tom Casalini, Portraitist Extraordinaire [Part 1]
Tom Casalini has spent a little over three decades behind the camera. He has worked on national campaigns for companies such as McDonalds, Life Magazine, and Timex to name a few. But if you ask him he will tell you without hesitation that portraiture is his true passion. When you see his portraits you will understand why he feels that way. Each of his portrait creations is a result of his innate ability to draw out the most intimate details about a person’s life and translate them into a vision that paints a honest picture of who they are. I am a great fan of Tom’s work and have been contemplating for a while to meet him and talk to him about his style and philosophy concerning portraiture. I contacted Tom last week about doing an interview and he agreed to meet me at his studio. Tom’s studio is located in Zionsville, Indiana, a quant artsy town northwest of Indianapolis. You can find him and his portfolio online at Casalini Portraits. He is also the author of the book “Ordinary Heroes” – a tribute to the Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. Here is Part 1 of my interview with Tom:
4
Aug 10
Are budget strobes any good?
I am an amateur photographer which by definition means that I earn my living by doing something else other than photography. That also means that I don’t really have the budget for expensive lights/strobes that many professionals use in their line of work. The professionals need them for reliability and consistency and I think they should get the best equipment their money can buy. Just like they say the best camera is the one that you currently have with you – the best light is the one that you have. In my case it was a Flashpoint Digipop and a Adorama softbox that my father-in-law handed to me several months ago. Rated at 300 watt sec it is not the best in the world, but it is small enough to carry and set up on location. I had the opportunity to take some head-shots for a childrens theatre company in town and I used this simple setup and the results at least in my view turned out great. I took these head-shots in the gathering area of Madam Walker Theater in Indianapolis, Indiana. The background was put together by covering a rectangular cutout propped against an easel stand with a cloth backdrop that I made myself. The strobe was on Camera Right at 45ยบ shooting down through a Westcott Umbrella. I did not use a reflector to fill in shadows because I wanted to create something more “dramatic”. The strobe was set to 1/3 rd power and exposure was 1/180 sec at f/8.0. Above you can see some head-shots from that set – what do you think?
21
Jul 10
M.@ IMA: Using Depth of Field as your guide to photograph kids
It is so hard to get a kid to stay still when you are trying to photograph. It becomes even more of a problem when you are using a manual focus camera like the Hasselblad. The camera is a big hulking piece of metal and is very heavy. Most of the time I just pre-set the focus by using the DOF scale corresponding to the aperture setting I am using.
I then guesstimate the distance and quickly make sure that the subject (kid) is within acceptable focus. The beauty of Medium Format negatives is that even if the photograph is slightly out of focus it doesn’t seem to show in prints no larger than 8X10. The photograph above was indeed slightly out of focus but can you tell by looking at it?
7
Dec 09
Asante Family Portrait Session
Probably one of the most photogenic families that I had the privilege of photographing. Deborah Asante is a renowned story teller and runs the highly regarded Asante Children’s Theatre. For this session I used a single softbox and a reflector. The softbox was on camera right and the reflector on camera left to fill in shadows. There was a big window to the left but it did not help much as it was pretty late in the evening. I used one of the walls of the living room as the background which worked out really well.
