Annie Leibovitz wrote in her recent book, At Work, that an important part of her process when photographing portraits of people, especially artists, was to get to know them a little before a shoot. She wrote, “when you first meet someone you’re just trying to be nice and picking up clues for a picture. You get ideas when you’re with them that you wouldn’t get simply by reading about them or studying their work”. Or ideas that you wouldn’t get just by showing up for a shoot, for that matter.
As I met with and sat in Pat Braden’s house in Yellowknife’s “Old Town” – which he affectionately refers to as “The Shack” – and took in the wealth of character that his place contained, Annie’s book ran through my mind. I had never met Pat before, and only knew of him as a sort of local legend. Everyone, it seems, knows of Pat Braden, and he’s got to be one of the North’s most highly regarded musician/songwriters. I’ve photographed him before, probably 4 or 5 five different times, but only as a piece of a bigger puzzle: he was at events I was hired to cover, and was an “incidental” photo for me, not the key subject.
When he contacted me about photographing the art for his upcoming album, and we initially discussed ideas via email, I knew I had to meet him, first, and take in the location…it’s character….and see how that would translate to a concept. Pat wanted to stay away from posed, and wanted an intimacy in his images that would tell potential audiences a little more about him as a performer than simply a man with an instrument. I loved the sentiment, and loved the challenge. The first images that came to my mind when I saw the location, and started to know a little more about Pat, were those of southern blues musicians. Old black and white images of, well, characters. I wanted to try to get some of the “old time feel” into my portraits of Pat.
These images below represent many “real” moments; for example, I clicked away as Pat started looking through old images that mean a great deal to him, including ones of his mother. The expressions on his face, and the shine in his eyes, couldn’t come from me saying “now Pat…smile at the camera”. And when Pat plays his instrument, he doesn’t try to strike rockstar poses. He simply feels it. It’s evident.
I loved this assignment, and I’m happy to share a few portraits….
For those interested in more of the technical details of the photos, the location was perfect, and had a beautiful natural light feel to it that I didn’t want to lose. But at the same time, a really cloudy day just didn’t provide the light I needed to be able to shoot these at a low ISO (and increase the detail and quality of the shots). What to do? Set up a portable sun. I brought down one of my studio lights with a softbox and positioned it outside his house, shining down into the window. The diffusion provided by the softbox, filtered through the window, allowed it to still feel completely like natural light in his house – while still providing the lighting power I needed to get crisp, non-blurry shots.
Tags: bass, black and white, insrtumentalist, musician, Northwest Territories, pat braden, player, Portrait, Portraits, Yellowknife
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[...] wrote in my last blog post about how I think for certain types of photography, meeting with your client beforehand is [...]
I must say these are beautiful photographs you have taken of Pat. He comes into my store regularly and it is nice to “get to know” him in a sense. Lovely work.
[...] had the good opportunity to photograph local musician and songwriter (not to mention legend) Pat Braden a couple of times. When I had an inquiry to photograph his daughter, Elora Braden, I was excited [...]