Rangefinder Magazine
June 2002

Insight /On the Cover

In June, we feature photographers of every ilk—photojournalists, pictorialists, fashion and beauty photographers, and also WPPI’s own award-winning wedding and portrait photographers. World famous fashion photographer Howard Schatz is profiled on page 8. He talks about the “Rare Creatures” who visit his studio for testing as a prelude to fashion or beauty jobs. His devotion to this set of images was incredible and resulted in a breathtaking book of the same title. Bill Aron is a good-natured and highly insightful documentary photojournalist who has spent the bulk of his career documenting Jewish communities in L.A., New York, Jerusalem, Cuba and the Soviet Union (page 20). Formally educated as a sociologist, Aron’s photographs illuminate the many unseen nuances of Judaism around the world. Joshua Greene has devoted his recent life to ensuring that the work of his father, celebrated celebrity photographer Milton H. Greene, lives on (page 26). Joshua Greene, a successful editorial and commercial photographer, inherited the priceless collection of photographs that his father Milton had compiled during an illustrious four-decades-long career. Some of these images, incredibly, have never been exhibited in public before. The story of the restoration of these images makes good reading. Mike McCune, an award-winning author and gifted photographer, takes a look at the intangible qualities that make a great nature photograph (page 34). As McCune points out, a lot of small details come together in an image that manifests, “Majesty.” Also featured this month are the images of WPPI 2002’s Awards of Excellence Print Competition (page 54). These First Place and Grand Award winning images push the envelope of creativity and photographic excellence in the world of wedding photography and portraiture.

Bill Hurter
Editor

Photographer: Howard Schatz
MODEL: Kristina Rostad, Maine
Camera: Hasselblad ELD
Lens: 120mm lens
Film: Kodak E-100S
Lighting: Chimera softboxes with Balcar
strobes from Calumet
Location: Schatz’s New York studio
POST-CAPTURE: Drum scan—hi-res
Comments: “Hundreds of models come to castings at our studio in New York as a necessary step in advance of a beauty or fashion shoot. They come from all over the world and they embody an enormous range of human expression, physical beauty, complexion, sexiness, personality and hope. The models are like a dream and I rendered these images with that in mind, and heart.”

Howard Schatz studied techniques from more than 30 fashion and photography magazines before starting on this project. “I knew they all had something to offer and initially, I simply looked at each girl as a blank canvas,” he says.

This meant shooting with no makeup, flat lighting and no special styling, except encouraging each girl to act “natural”—not always easy for models or even model “wannabes,” used to posing for the camera. To put the models at ease and achieve an air of naturalness, Schatz asked each girl to talk about herself and her background, and maybe even relate a story about her family, such as what it was like to sit and have breakfast in her mother’s kitchen after living in New York.

These images are from Howard Schatz’s latest book, Rare Creatures. See Julie Miller’s article about him beginning on page 8.