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Rangefinder Magazine
July 2003

Insight/ On the Cover by Bill Hurter

This month’s Rangefinder is all about fine portraiture. Is it a changing art form or are we simply redefining traditional portraiture in a contemporary way for the new millennium? My feeling is that both things are happening. In this issue, we feature the portraits of Michael Collopy (pg. 18), whose Architects of Peace is a stirring testament to the great leaders of our era. Collopy’s style is classical—traditional posing and composition and all done in black and white, with a pronounced emphasis on elegant classical portrait lighting, producing images with long tonal range and subtle highlight brilliance. Even though his portraits are contemporary by nature, in form they pay homage to the traditional portrait artist, as do the imaginative images of Joseph and Louise Simone (pg. 8), who incorporate modern technology, but depend on classical posing and lighting techniques. Straying from the traditional are David Williams (pg. 64) and Jennifer George Walker (pg. 42), whose portraits illuminate the inner qualities of their subjects. Both Williams and George Walker want their images to endure and to be seen as story-telling devices, designed to impart significance about a person, time or place. Their work is fascinating as is the subtle perfection in the evocative portraits of Fran Reisner (pg. 36), who excels at distilling the emotion from each of her portrait subjects.
This issue also brings the introduction of two new features in the magazine. Bob Rose authors the first “Learning Curve” on color management, a meaty subject, for certain. The thrust of these articles is educational, built around concepts that have great interest to readers. Both the concepts and the products that support the technology will be discussed in these articles. Also new to this issue is a feature called “Building Your Business,” the first of which is authored by Rangefinder president, Skip Cohen. We at Rangefinder are determined to improve the magazine on an ongoing basis. We hope you like the new changes!

Bill Hurter
Editor

PHOTOGRAPHERS: Joseph and Louise Simone
TITLE: “Mysterious Rendezvous”
CAMERA: Contax 645 camera
FILM: Kodak 400NC
EXPOSURE: 1/4 second at f/5.6
LIGHTING: two Smith-Victor
600-watt hotlights
COMMENTS: This portrait was created with two Smith Victor hotlights (600-watt), one to create the shadow of the man on the background and filtered with a yellow gel. The other hotlight was used as a main light and filtered with a diffusion light disk. A reflector was used to fill the shadows. Panels were used to create the diagonal shadows in front of the lights. The image was exposed on Kodak 400NC film at 1/4 second at f/5.6.
Unlike many of the images that appear in the accompanying article about the Simones, this image was created with more traditional photographic materials. All of the images in the article were made with the Scene Machine Virtual Backgrounds System.

For more information on the Simones, see Terry Deglau’s article about them, which begins on page 8.