Behind the Scenes of Mark Seliger Photographing Tony Bennett's 90th Birthday

From a personal experience I've found that the more mature the person is, the more honest the portraits are being captured. These people have seen it all, especially celebrities. They are not camera shy. It's a privilege to work with such subjects. You can't have a bad photograph of them, yet you need to make history by capturing an iconic photo of that person. In this behind-the-scenes video, Celebrity Photographer Mark Seliger captures portraits of legendary singer Tony Bennett on his 90th birthday.

Seliger is really good at creating iconic portraits. Phase One has teamed up with him to record the behind the scenes from that photoshoot. While it's a promotional video advertising Phase One products, it shows quite interesting details for us, the photographers. We all know Phase One cameras produce high-quality files, however in the hands of people with experience, those results can become masterpieces.

The Setups

In the video I've seen three setups. Two of them are on a seamless backdrop and one of them is in a corner of a room, probably in the same studio.

Seamless White Backdrop, Cheap Clamp Lamps

You've read that right. Seliger uses cheap hot lights you can find in any hardware store for about $9 a piece. He uses them to light both a seamless white background, and Bennett's face. In the screengrab above you can clearly see the lights. If you were asked to photograph Bennett, you would probably rent the most expensive lighting gear (and three backup sets of it). But Seliger lit it cheap in this setup. Here's how he probably used six $9 lights:

In the video they also talk about Phase One's low-light capabilities by utilizing high ISO. I guess that's the reason Seliger is using such a setup. The results are quite nice, as we can see on the display:

See the two lights in front of Bennett's face? The left one is the key light while the right one is the fill light. As these lights are usually not dimmable, they've probably used different light bulbs to achieve an appropriate light ratio. The left lamp has a more powerful light bulb than the right one.

Seamless Gray Backdrop With One Strobe

The second setup looks like the same arrangement they used to film Seliger's interview with. It is a single softbox on camera right and a black flag on the right to block light from hitting the background. For the video interview they used the modeling light of the strobe. For the portraits of Bennett in this setup, Seliger used flash.

You can see the flagged background. The right part of the background is darker than the left part, while Bennett's face is brighter on his left and darker on his right. This is a classic technique to make cross contrast between light and dark parts of the foreground and the background.

Natural Window Light

For a third setup, Seliger uses natural light coming from the window to create a series of black and white portraits. The window light is just like a softbox. Positioning the subject closer to the light source makes the results with more contrast, as you can see here. Bennett is very close to the window and thus the facial features are clearly defined.

The Emotion In the Portrait

While the technical part of a photoshoot can be something anyone can learn, capturing an emotional portrait is a pure art. There's no right or wrong way to do it. Every photographer has their own way of bringing out expressions from a person. Seliger admits he tries to make his subjects feel uncomfortable sometimes in order to get a more interesting portrait. Even if he shared his exact method, I am sure it might not work for most of us.

It is very different when working with experienced and mature subjects. The way they look at the camera is full of confidence so you can hardly make a bad photo of them. However the secret sauce to such portraiture is not in having the right person, the right light ratios, and gear, it is in the art of communicating with your subject.

[via Phase One]