“To Mark, From One Photographer to Another. Alfred Eisenstaedt.”  Wow. To read those words as a young photographer on the frail edge of a freelance life penned by the legendary LIFE Magazine photographer was career affirming. I was a part of the team even though I might be a bench-sitting rookie. “Eisie” would later recommend me to do the stills on a NBC special on his life and on his 95th birthday I would photograph him on a Time-Life Building balcony. He told one of the editors at LIFE, Bobbi Baker Burrows, that it was his favorite photo of himself and when he passed away two years later, the magazine ran the image as a full final page tribute to the master lensman.

I remember the day of the shoot well and the lessons I took away from it.

With Eisie in front of my lens and the former director of the LIFE Gallery Maryann Kornely to my right who I had “volunteered” to hold a large silver reflector, my finger was about to depress the shutter when he interrupted, “Did you check my tie? Make sure to always check a gentleman’s tie before you take his picture.” It was. But how fortunate I have been to have had so many of these masters as my teachers through my Q&As for various photography magazines. At the beginning I would do a quick reportage shot to document the meeting but this evolved into more formal portrait sessions as I saw the potential for a meaningful series which became my first book, Faces of the Twentieth Century: Master Photographers and Their Work.

While Eisie’s most famous photograph is of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square celebrating the end of World War II, I consider his environmental portrait - a portrait of a person in an environment that relates to them - of Hiroshima survivors taken a few months later, to be his most powerful image. He used a burnt tree to frame a mother and her son sitting on a pile of rubble with the destroyed city in soft focus behind them. He depressed the shutter just as the woman’s hair blew across her face. You can still feel the cold wind of that day more than 70 years later.

Also at Eisie’s birthday celebration in a non-descript conference room was Mary Ellen Mark. She had come to the party but without a camera. Mary Ellen asked if she could borrow mine with a 28mm lens. I watched her in action. By doing a Dutch angle with the wide lens she created an energy in her frame that was absent in the physical structure. Another lesson learned.

I’ve had the opportunity to travel the world with Nick Ut who photographed one of the most important images in the history of photography during the Vietnam War. I did an environmental portrait of Nick in his home-office with his Pulitzer Prize-winning image “Terror of War” in the background. Arnold Newman who I also had the honor of interviewing and photographic is considered one of the great masters of the environmental portrait. His 1946 portrait of Igor Stravinsky at his piano serves as a classic example.

When doing any type of portrait session, I will talk to my subject as a dentist talks to their patient, in other words saying things that can be acknowledged without the need of a verbal response more than a simple grunt. In my workshops and my “how to” book, The Travel Photo Essay: Describing a Journey Through Images, I suggest that an active conversation be done before or after a photo shoot, not during it, unless you want the person to be caught in all sorts of awkward facial expressions. It’s better to share a quiet one-on-one moment and let the camera peer into the window of their soul.

Whether I’m doing an eyes are the window to the soul or environmental type portrait, I’m always aware of where I’m cropping the subject and how limbs are exiting the frame, making sure that they’re not dragging the viewer’s attention out of it.  Visual tension can be created by have limbs cut off at joints but make this a conscious choice for a logical reason if that’s what you want to achieve.  If someone is wearing all black or all white, I often bring in the arms and hands to break up the flatness of a stark monotone area of the image.

My environmental portraits tend to be a ¾ length, cropping between the hips and the knees. This is followed by a crop between the knees and the ankles and finally a full body shot as I did in the case of Alfred Eisenstaedt. I keep in mind full-frame thinking, using the camera sensor or film frame as a canvas and filling the space effectively.

For the eyes are the window to the soul portrait I tend to use a longer focal length with a shallower depth of field, a technique that can be very effective for these types of head and shoulder shots. There’s a reason why a 105mm is considered a portrait lens in the full frame 35mm world. The compression from the longer focal length works well with most people’s bone structures. I’ve also found an 85mm lens to be a great focal length for these types of portraits.  That said a number of photographers such as Platon are doing amazing up close and personal portraits with much wider lenses. If you do go this direction, keep in mind that wider lenses can distort facial features, so tread lightly if you want your subjects on the other side of the lens to be happy with the results.

Using a shallow depth of field helps the viewer focus on the eyes as the window to the soul by letting the background dissolve into a beautiful bokeh. I find working around f/4 or f/4.5 with the 105mm and focusing on the front eye if the person is turned slightly to the side, yields excellent results. Going even shallower can be dramatic and has its applications but the technique can overshadow the subject.

For many of my portraits such as those of Albert Watson, Gordon Parks, Mary Ellen Mark, Araki, Annie Leibovitz, Dan Winters, and Sebastiao Salgado, I took advantage of open shade, the area where the direct sun ends and shade – indirect sunlight takes over. This type of diffused ambient light is both flattering and can be found any time during the daylight hours as long as there’s a structure – natural or man-made - to intervene with the direct sun. Henri Cartier-Bresson reminded me that only "Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,” referencing the famous Noel Coward song in our conversation about life and photography. Not a bad idea to keep in mind unless you’re carrying around a hand-held silk.

Just like fingerprints, everyone has their own unique face. If we can record it with the appropriate light and composition and tap into something that tells us about the sentient being behind our subject’s eyes, we have achieved our goal.

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