Nov 23, 2023
Lauren Bacall by Cornell Lucas ,1958.
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Lauren Bacall by Cornell Lucas ,1958.
Joan Collins by Cornell Lucas .
Brigitte Bardot / publicity photo for Ralph Thomas's Doctor at Sea (1955) / photo by Cornell Lucas.
Cornel Lucas was born in Highbury in London and was competitive from an early age. His elder brother bought him his first camera and his six...
Gene Tierney 1952 - by Cornel Lucas
Merry Christmas children......everywhere...
'Anouk Aimee' 1949, by Cornell Lucas
The previous three shots I have done for this project (The Echo) by David Bailey, Irving Penn and Julia Margaret Cameron have been suggestions of iconic studio shots given to us by our tutors to try and imitate. Therefore, because reproducing these studio images has really interested me, I decided to replicate some other photographer’s portraiture work that they have captured in the studio by finding them myself and from photographer’s who inspire me.
The first photographer I have chosen is Cornell Lucas. Born in 1920, Lucas was a British film still photographer who was considered to be a pioneer of film portraiture in the 1940s and 1950s and shot many famous film stars of the time. Lucas was also the first ever photographer to win a BAFTA.
The image of his that I have tried to emulate is of Anouk Aimee, taken in 1949, which can be seen above. Anouk Aimee was a very well known French film actress of the time who was considered as a very beautiful, elegant woman. I feel that Lucas’ shot of her reflects this due to the directionality of light and her pose; the light from above is relatively hard as it has created a ‘spotlight’ effect – suggesting that it was quite a small light source – I feel that this use of lighting creates an almost angelic atmosphere to the shot which is also supported by the way she is looking up – as if she is looking up to heaven – the whole shot looks quite ethereal. Her pose is very elegant and her eyes looking up to the light allows her eyelashes to look long, her eyes to look big and the lighting from above that is directly hitting the centre of her face to make her lips look plump, highlighting her cheekbones and giving symmetry to her facial features; something considered desirable and beautiful in appearance. Her hands are also positioned in quite a feminine pose, which makes them look delicate. The black background of this shot has been created by the use of a small key light source (most probably a beauty dish or small soft box) lighting the model’s face only, therefore, no fill light is hitting the backdrop, meaning that it is all in shadow.
To recreate this shot I used a small beauty dish on a stand, which I set up very tall so that the light would be as high above the model as possible. This beauty dish was set to f8 which I carefully measured using a light meter. I then put a necklace on my subject and put a black blanket around her shoulders, similar to the props and general mise-en-scene used in Cornell Lucas’ image. During post-production, I converted my image to black and white and straightened it slightly in Photoshop CS6. I also used the heal tool to edit out any blemishes or imperfections on my subjects face. I also tried darkening my subject’s lips as Anouk Aimee is clearly wearing lipstick in Cornell Lucas’ image but it looked too unnatural so I left them as they were.
For this exercise I shot on a Canon 1100D using a standard zoom lens (but shot on a focal length of 29mm). I set my ISO to 100, used an aperture of f8 and a shutter speed of 1/125.
If I was to try and mimic this shot again I would make quite a few improvements – personally, I think this is the weakest of all my Echo images. First of all, I would get my model to wear dark lipstick, get her to remove her ring and edit out her nose ring in Photoshop. I would also try and perfect the hand placements further and adjust the black cloth over her shoulders so that it covered more of her skin and the straps of her top. I would also suspend the beauty dish from the ceiling using an overhead pantograph so that I could light my subjects face from directly above as I feel that the lighting in my image is quite unbalanced as one side of her face is in more shadow than the other.
ok here is the picture with the dirty nails. (or maybe they just look that way)....it looks like a cornell lucas and i recently realized it must have been taken at the same time as several other really great poses....same clothing as the others.....so was he filming Hell Drivers....hair is not right...or Nor the Moon By NIght??? hair is right for that....in character for something it looks like.....