Douglas Kirkland on Photography: Shooting with a Medium-Format Camera
with Douglas Kirkland
In the Douglas Kirkland on Photography series, well-known photographer Douglas Kirkland explores a variety of real-world photographic scenarios, sharing technique insights and critiquing the results.
This installment follows Douglas as creates a portrait for Kodak's "On Film" series, which features portraits of directors, cinematographers, and other major players in the film industry. Douglas has shot nearly 250 portraits for this series over the past 20 years.
The course begins with a discussion of the unique qualities of film—its clarity, definition, and tonal range—and of film’s enduring importance in today’s digital world. Next, Douglas tours the Mamiya RZ67 medium-format camera, demonstrating its components and comparing its format to 35mm film. He then demonstrates a variety of lighting, posing, and styling techniques while photographing Owen Roizman, an award-winning cinematographer, in the Kirkland studio in Los Angeles, California.
The course concludes with a critique of the resulting photographs. Douglas also shows how he resized and cropped the image to fit a print advertisement.
Douglas Kirkland began his photography career at Look and Life magazines in the 60s and 70s, during the golden age of photojournalism. He has worked on the sets of more than 100 motion pictures, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Out of Africa, Titanic, Moulin Rouge, and Australia. His iconic images of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Nicholson, Angelina Jolie, and Antonio Banderas, among others, are known all over the world. His work has been exhibited worldwide, and his "Freeze Frame" exhibition was shown at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills.
Some of Douglas's books include Light Years; Legends; Body Stories; An Evening with Marilyn; and Freeze Frame, a decade-by-decade look behind the scenes at 50 years of photographing the entertainment industry. Douglas also took the photographs for the best-selling book, James Cameron's Titanic. Some of his current book projects are a black-and-white volume entitled When We Were Young, a book on Coco Chanel, and a book of portraits called Face to Face (all Glitterati).
Douglas has received numerous awards, including a Lucie for Outstanding Achievement in Entertainment Photography in 2003, The Golden Eye of Russia in 2006, and also in 2006, a Lifetime Achievement Award from CAPIC in his native Toronto. In 2007, Douglas received an honorary MFA from Brooks Institute, which honored his deep commitment and dedication to his profession.
When he is not traveling the globe on assignment with his wife and business partner, Francoise, Douglas can be found at his home and studio in the Hollywood Hills in California.
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