insprired by irving penn

I really wanted to try to emulate Penn's technique in is portrait photography. He preferred the neutral background of the studio atmosphere and most of his shots are in black and white. He used natural light for all is shots. Even when traveling to remote locations he brought along a portable studio and used a funnel of sorts to capture the natural light and create the studio atmosphere. For this assignment I wanted to experiment with using a neutral background and natural light to do some black and white portraits.

When editing these photos I converted them to black and white and then adjusted the levels of contrast and brightness. I didn't do any cropping, I wanted to focus on the frame of the shot when I took it. I had the model pose in front of a plain wall near a window. I'm very pleased with how the lighting turned out. I also had her wear the cloth to add texture to the photo. The lighting really brings out the texture of the folds very beautifully.