Saturday, March 1, 2008

I think she might grow up to be a supermodel......

In what little free time I have had lately, I have been study my photography books. I came across a book by John Kobal called The Art of the Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers. I love these pictures of the old movie stars. I like the way they did the lighting and I am going to try to reconstruct that for some portraits of the family (when I get some more free time). I was looking at a picture of Clark Gable that would be a great setup for Joey. I will post that when I get that one figured out.

I continued to look through the book and one thing just made me gasp when I saw it! It was a picture of Marlene Dietrich. This was a portrait that was made for the 1930 movie Morroco. Here is the picture:
It is such a strking picture. The depth of field is very shallow, only her face is in focus while all else is blurred. I am looking at aquiring some old manual focus lenses so I can try to recreate some of these pictures. ( any of you people out there wanting to get rid of some old nikon 50mm manual focus lenses at a good price, drop me an email) I hope to find some models around the house here to practice on.

Anyway, that is not what made me gasp. What made me gasp was the fact that my niece Kaitlin looks exactly like Marlene Dietrich! I kid you not, look at this picture:
She had no idea I was taking this picture. It was a complete candid shot, so she was not posing in any way. She was working with Ellie at the art desk in my sunroom. I was sitting at the dining room table. I saw the way the light was coming in through the blinds and thought it look cool, so i grabbed my camera and shot this picture. The bad thing is, Kaitlin hates me taking her picture. I may never get another one like this. Hopefully she will let me take some Marlene Dietrich's recreates of her some day.

Kaitlin, I think you may have a future as a supermodel or movie star. When you go on and are earning 20 million per gig, remember your favorite uncle.....Not much, a couple million will do!