Hi this is Tamara Lackey for Adorama TV and in this episode of reDefine
I speak with fine art wedding and portrait photographer Parker
Pfister. We discuss how he uses light to dramatic affect by
skillfully employing what he sees and then he walks us through how exactly he
builds a shot.
Light by light by light. Check it out. AdoramaTV presents
the reDefine show with Tamra lackey. Hi Parker.
Hey Tamara, how are you? Hey Parker, you doing well?
I'm doing great. Good. I want to talk to you about your work, I'm really excited about
this conversation cause your work is good, and it's inspiring,
and its cool. Thanks. You've kinda done this kind of hiatus kind of thing
recently right? I have, I took a little break.
Yes. Why?
It was a reset.
I took a break I should say I didn’t take a break from working.
I'm actually working more. I took a break from sharing and from educating
because I just felt like, I always compare it to a lemming.
You know that suicidal animals that just go off a cliff and just
follow each other and that's all it is. I was kind of on the outside of the herd so
I had a chance to veer off before I got to the cliff.
I wanted to make work
and I wanted to have a message to share with other photographers that was
honest and true to me. So I could be honest and true to them.
It's something fresh, it's just not regurgitate information
in a pretty package. It’s a part of the artists journey,
you know from the cave wall to now. You know trog and ug
in the cave. Their watching each other paint the
the Buffalo, you know with the spear. Then they copy and
that's part of the artist's life.
You’ve got to know when turn that off and be your own
artist and put your blinders on. That’s one of the hardest thing to do.
It is because we're inundated with photography now it's
literally everywhere. So just you know for the last
four or five yearsI haven’t been to the internet, well
clearly I have been to the internet and I'm not calling it an interweb
yet. So you know I'm not that guy. But it
confuses me. I just don't look.
I don't look any more I look to myself and I look to my failures
to make newer stuff, newer images.
What would you say if you had to, I mean obviously it's not just one thing,
but if you had to summarize and say this is the one thing I care to convey,
what do you think that? To convey my photographs?
That means something you create and that you want people understand you're
trying to convey.
There's nothing I really want
to share except a story. So a story?
But it's not the kind of story that most people think. It's like.. oh the story of
the ring bearer, the story this. The story is what I'm writing it's
mostly fiction, what I write. So I did come up with these storylines and I make
a photograph that
that's representative, that's the personification
of this story and its um
and it's up to them to decide what they get out of it. It’s how they read it.
So walk me through that a little bit. You have a scene.
Maybe give us a scene.
So ok for the last two years
I have been doing a series on angels,
and especially this one particular angel and it's her
her story from the very
top of her existence to the very depths of her demise.
Okay. I create these little stories about her, like
how she maybe went to the dark side and
how she up lifted out of that. The final one,
which isn't the final one, but the last when I did was two weeks ago
and it was the fraudulent angel. She's lost her wings, she has to wear these fake
wings and
its representative you know I put it all in there and I just wrote this story.
Kind of made the image feel that way but then sent it out to 15 friends to
get there perspective on it. Right. What I got back was just
amazing and I shared it in my show this morning and it was you know
the got to see everybody, art is subjective and it all read differently. Everybody read it
completely different but they all had a connection to it they understood
how that represented a part of their life.
It represents all of us in a way, right, and so I’m always creating the stories
that's more my fine art work.
Then carrying that around and sharing that kinda storyline with
portraits and weddings and things like that, make it a little
unique I think. This more conceptual work where your writing the story
is that just personal projects?
Do have an intention? I consider it my future.
Your future? Yep right now it's personal project this is my future I'm
shooting more for galleries, museums things like that. I've had
couple wonderful interviews with curator’s, that's kinda the
direction where it's going.
Interesting. Is that going to be your soul direction or in addition to still doing
weddings? Because you have
a strong wedding business too.
Yeah, I'm a very small wedding business. I'm very
you know I only do 10 weddings a year. So that affords me
to do all the other things that I do, and I shoot 10 or 15 portraits a year and that’s about it.
Your welcome guest the Biltmore. Apparently your the one
person who’s seen the back part of
the Biltmore Estate. I have. What is that exactly?
You know it's it's back there. It doesn't exist actually. Like does it exist?
It doesn’t exist.
But it's is about the same size as the part that does exist? Yeah it is.
That's fascinating.
That's very interesting, because your Nashville, North Carolina?
I am and that's where I get to play, its like the
little playground there. It's beautiful amazing people.
Yeah so coming out of this hiatus,
are you planning to start sharing and being a lot more, I mean you already
are on Instagram.
Yeah, I just started with the social media stuff and
I do want to share a little more.
It's part of the,
the reset and I'm getting used to it
slowly, surely. Yeah.
It’s like a new phase. It is a new phase. You’re doing workshops again.
Doing workshops again, yep. I'll be announcing those in a couple weeks
and
I've always done two a year. That's the one education that I kept going with.
That's one thing I didn't give up, because it's more,
you know it's personal and I can really help somebody I think in
three to four days. This year I probably going to plain on 3. I've gotten
so much response to people wanting to do it
and I haven't set dates yet so probably do three this year
or maybe even four. I don't know.
If people want to find out more about you, I know where you're about to
do something really cool which is to walk through your images and tell us your
thought process and how you created most your stuff. Sure, sure.
But before we go to that can you tell us where people can find out more about you?
Well my website is
parkerjphoto.com.
Facebook I'm using a little bit.
You're on the Facebook. I'm on the Facebook, yeah.
Amm. I don’t know who I am on there though.
Think just Parker J Photo again. Okay. I guess.
And then Instagram I seem to use more than anything because I speak in images.
That's my first language. This language usually doesn’t
come out. Although it's really working for you right now.
Super. And Instagram what’s your user name?
Parker I think it’s Parker J Pfister.
Perfect, okay. Alright great. So lets walk through some images. Ok.
Well.
This image is kinda representative of just how I see light
a little bit differently. Um I know at the Biltmore state since we've already
discussed that,
they have a policy. If it's 30 percent chance for rain there putting up a tent.
Even if it doesn't rain and it clears up your shooting under a tent.
Now we've got like 18 stops difference between the bright sunny day,
because it's always gorgeous outside.
The bright sunny day outside and now they have to stand there underneath the tent
so there in the shade.
So ether we bring a ginormous power pack to
light everything or we just expose on their faces and just let background go
where it is
and then try to bring back a little bit that. Or
we just see light a little differently. Get out of the mindset that you have
to see all the detail you have to do all that
and do an image a little differently and it’s the exact same scene.
Just seen differently and reacting differently
to the light and I think it's much more dramatic that way. That way
you know we got the silhouette of the rings coming in.
It's just a different, a whole different mood to the image and I think
it's much more powerful. We don't need to see the expression on the face we can
almost read it.
Which is there their silhouette profiles. I think it makes it more interesting
and
you know, less obvious. I'm always about the not so obvious.
Then I've got this image I think this demonstrates like
you know, learning your lighting and really testing out different
lighting scenarios and
and building your own particular style in lighting.
For this particular image I have an old Mole Richardson light.
Which is like this old the Hollywood light.
That I've taken the grid off of, and put a Nikon speedlight SB-900
in there and so that's my first light coming through. So it's going to things
it's giving a little bit of rim light to the model and it's also
saying hey I'm using this old really cool light, which I'm really not.
The reason I did’t use the light is because it's a 2000 watt light.
A little bit hot and I’d have to bring everything up and Its gonna
catch our model on fire. So then I introduce the second light.
Which brings second little rim light around. So we're kinda building it up
as we go here. So for the next lights the key lights.
So now we've got three lights going on and then the fourth flight will do in the
background. I put a little red gel
in there. The fifth light I put another Nikon SB-900
in the trunk. I didn't happen to have a red filter around. So I went into the
dark room,
took my safe light cover off and put it over the SB-900. So now we've got this
really warm red light coming out of the trunk that she's stepping out of.
Now for the
I think the fifth, sixth light. There's two grids spots going around
raking across the front that's lighting the lower half.
Where the key light isn’t. Which is a beauty dish up above.
Now we've also entered a little globe over here to give a little
interest.
All we have to do is work on her pose and we've got a shot not straight at
the camera.
There's no post done. So it's all within lighting we give
our images dimension. That's what photography is.
Thanks so much Parker for
that excellent walkthrough and thank you for tuning in to reDefine show.
Don't forget to join me next time here on Adorama TV.
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