David LaChapelle Quotes

I believe in a visual language that should be as strong as the written word.

I’m a photographer, period. I love photography, the immediacy of it. I like the craft, the idea of saying ‘I’m a photographer.

My idea was that if I took a picture of somebody and years later, or whenever, they would die and if someone wanted to know who this person was, they could take one of these pictures and it would tell who the person was.

Pictures are an escape. They should be bigger than life. In the same way, celebrities provide an escape from the mundane. They are photographed so we can worship them – so they are worthy of our worship.

The key is to photograph your obsessions; whether that’s old people’s hands or skyscrapers. Think of a blank canvas, because that’s what you’ve got, and then think about what you want to see – not anyone else.

David LaChapelle Quotes on Style

You just do what you love, and then a style happens later on. People put it together and decide it’s yours. But some days you wake up and you’re happy and some days you wake up and you’re sad, some days you wake up and you’re feeling angry about things… if you can translate that through your work, and express those feelings, that’s okay as an artist.

I was working in this very bombastic style. I didn’t really know about style. I didn’t think about it:

I wanted it to provide an escape route, I wanted to make pictures that were fantastic and took you into another world, one that was brighter. I started off with this idea.

I did what I was interested in, what I was attracted to, what I was drawn to. I was drawn to color, and I was drawn to humor, and I was drawn to sexuality and spontaneity. It was all really intuitive. I never really thought, “Well this is the style…”

For me, it’s easier to like more things than to dislike them; I’m not a critic in that sense. I find it easier to like more, to be more open and enjoy more things, which has given me more opportunities.

People say photographs don’t lie, mine do.

I never want people to be repulsed with my pictures; I always want to attract people.

The minute you point a camera at something, you are manipulating the image, because you are cropping out whatever is to the left and right of it. The minute you put a light on someone, you are manipulating the image.

If you want reality take the bus.

LaChapelle on the Art of Photography

I went to art high school and thought I’d be a painter. Unfortunately I didn’t finish high school, but that’s always been part of my work.

I was always painting when I was a kid. But then when I handled a camera when I was 17, that was it for me. I loved photography. I would work 4 or 5 hours a day. It was like a calling.

Just as Renaissance artists provided narratives for the era they lived in, so do I. I’m always looking beyond the surface. I’ve done that ever since I first picked up a camera.

My biggest advice would be to take the pictures you want to take. Don’t think about the marketplace, what sells, or what an editor might say. And don’t think about style. It’s all bullshit and surface stuff.

Then I got this idea in my head that magazines were like a gallery and if you got your magazine page ripped out and someone stuck it on their refrigerator, then that was a museum – someone’s private museum.

It’s much harder to work for yourself, by yourself, than to create work for a gallery, because there are no limits and you can do anything you want. It’s always easier when you have a parameter, when you have a limit. You can work within the limit and push it and walk the line, but when you’re given absolutely no limits, it’s harder. You must really think. It’s more challenging.

I stopped working for magazines in 2006 because I felt I had said all I had to say in that world. I didn’t want to work with celebrities or do fashion any more. It didn’t occur to me that I could make photographs like this one for galleries. To be honest, I didn’t think the art world would have me.

I didn’t see any difference between being a photographer or being an artist. I didn’t make those boundaries. If someone wants to think it’s art, that’s great, but I’ll let history decide.

Fashion and the Business of Photography

I try to get the visual part of my brain turned on. It’s like a muscle that you need to start working. Once I do that the ideas just start coming.

The tools I learned photographing celebrities, now I want to use them to sell ideas.

I have this idea that you can use glamour and still have it represent something that matters.

In the fashion world, I was always an outsider, but I made people look good, so I had a career.

I’ve never wanted to be part of an inner circle of any scene. I’ve always been an outsider looking to question and subvert.

When I shoot, the image has to be there first. And photographs have always been manipulated – [Richard]Avedon retouched all his American west portraits. I could take a photo of you now and crop it to make it look a certain way. But, with me, the image has to come first.

My work is about making candy for the eyes. It’s about grabbing your attention. Even though my work is appearing in magazines I am trying to make a large picture. I want my photographs to read like a poster.

What’s your Favorite David LaChapelle Quote?

Have a favorite David LaChapelle quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

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To see more of LaChapelle’s brilliant photography, check out the image archive on his official website.

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Anton Corbijn is a photographer, film director and music video director. Born in the Netherlands in 1955, he made his first inroads in the world of professional photography in the mid-’70s. This was thanks to his work photographing the band Herman Brood & His Wild Romance, which served the mutual purpose of rocketing the band to fame and increasing the exposure of their photographer.

His success enabled Corbijn to segue into a high-profile career with the British magazine NME (New Musical Express), which gave him a chance to photograph some of the most distinctive and iconic performers in the world.

The crisply stylish and moody appearance of his black and white photography work perfectly encapsulated the look and feel of the post-punk cultural movement of the 1980s. He became particularly associated with the bands Depeche Mode and U2, directing a number of live concert films for the former and several music videos for the latter. But he has also brought his distinct brand of directorial and photographic flair to music videos for bands as diverse as Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay, Danzig and Nirvana.

Though Anton Corbijn’s success has transcended the medium of photography, throughout his film work recurs the theme of the power of black and white imagery, as well as the exquisitely subtle composition of his photographs, the sharp juxtaposition of light and shadow.

Below we’ve listed 45 of our favorite quotes from the legendary rock photographer which are guaranteed to inspire and help improve your photography.

Anton Corbijn Quotes

Photography has taken me from isolation.

I believe that photography is a very simple affair. I meet people – and the camera is only something like a recording machine. My work has nothing to do with the circus that other people create, although of course that can also result in an excellent photo.

My way in for photographing people is really their work. I’m always interested in what people make, and then I photograph the person. Sometimes the person is a disappointment. But that’s the risk. It informs me a lot about the character of a person if I know their work first.

My biggest fear always is that I’ll photograph an idea rather than a person, so I try to be quite sensitive to how people are.

I’ve done an incredible amount of painters. It’s an area, for me, where there’s more mystery left. I’ve photographed so many musicians, I’ve been in studios so often, I know the whole process. The mystery’s gone from it. I think it’s important to keep mystery into our lives. There’s a longing connected with it.

I have always felt that if you take a picture of a person, the picture not only has to say something about that particular person, but also say something about the photographer. Why else would you have one photographer take the picture and not the other? So the challenging part is taking a photograph that stands out, and also producing an end result that doesn’t resemble anything you’ve ever seen before.

As an artist, you say something about yourself in your work. That is what distinguishes your own work from that of others.

If you make something with love and, you know, passion and you tell a real story, I think it will always find an audience somehow, you know.

Corbijn on his Career

My start as a photographer was very simple and not based on any knowledge of it or wanting to create a masterpiece. I was obsessed with the music world and tried to find a way to be part of it. By borrowing my dad’s camera once, and taking it to a free daytime concert in our town, where I took a few shots, I became convinced that this was my calling. Only then did I start to have an interest in photography itself, but for a long time musicians were my only subjects.

For me N.M.E. was a very big thing. When I first came to the United Kingdom I started taking pictures for them and I became their main photographer for five years, and that’s really been the basis of everything I’ve been doing since.

In England, I’m already labeled a rock photographer, which is a little insulting, because I’m not a rock photographer at all.

[On being called the greatest Rock photographer] It narrows the way you judge a photograph – I really try to take photos that go beyond a person’s notoriety, and although I don’t always succeed, of course, it is what I aim for, and that way we can relate to a fellow human instead of a celebrity in the photograph. But if you already label the photo a certain way, it will be looked at a certain way. That is why I call myself a portrait photographer. In any case, I have, for the last thirty-plus years, done series on painters, actors, and others. The world in front of my camera is a lot broader than just music – that is more the past, I’d say.

I never really enjoyed getting a portfolio together then sending it out whereas putting up the website is quite an enjoyable experience. The net’s just a much faster and more modern way to distribute things and you have to embrace it.

… yes, I’ve become a little more professional – which I don’t really want to be but I can’t help it at some point.

Now I’m on my fifth period. I take a lot of photographs of painters like Lucian Freud and Richard Prince.” Why? “I’m a frustrated painter. You’re totally your own boss. You don’t have to travel.

I have never understood models. I find it really hard to find beauty in that or to discover beauty because the beauty was so obvious. I have never understood models. I find it really hard to find beauty in that or to discover beauty because the beauty was so obvious.

Everybody is a photographer now, so it’s very democratic in a sense. There’s an imagery overload, so it’s really hard to get any message across in photography these days. And anything can be manipulated, so the ideal of the camera being the truth teller is also gone. If I were young today, I’m not sure I would have chosen the same career path. I would probably have been a painter instead.

Music Video Quotes

Apart from photography and music videos, I also do graphic design.

There’s only one music video that had an emotional impact on me, and that’s ‘Hurt’ by Johnny Cash. That’s exceptional. There is no music video I can think of apart from that one that really reaches you inside.

My photography changed from being more documentary-like to arranging things more, and that came into being partly because I started doing music videos, and I incorporated some things from the music videos into my photography again, by arranging things more.

When I started doing music videos in the early 80’s, the videos would look like a photographer making a film because the camera never moved, but in the end, the videos became much more filmic. Simultaneously, the experience of making videos worked back into my photography. I started to use stylists and props, and I became much more actively involved in what happened in front of the camera.

The Transition to Filmmaking

I’m not educated as a filmmaker, so it’s quite a jump for me.

Directing film is the hardest thing I have ever done.

[on finaning his first film] Well I actually had to sell the house afterwards. I thought I was going to get the money back but it didn’t work out. I didn’t have an agent so I took the worst contract you could imagine. [Laughs] Quite a few people made money on it but I didn’t. So that was a lesson learned.

I wanted to make a film as an artist, and it’s going to have to find an audience, you know. I don’t know how big the audience will be.

For many years I wanted to do a film, but I never had the courage to clear my desk and say, ‘OK I’ll take a year off and do a film.’

I wanted to do a film for a while, but I never found a script that I felt I was going to be the right person for; because if you’ve never made a film, you’re not taught how to make a film, and you feel like you lack skills.

A lot of scripts that I was given I didn’t feel were right for me, because I didn’t feel anything for them – I didn’t feel like I was going to change in life and start directing.

I don’t want to knock photography, and I don’t feel that film is up there but photography isn’t. I think they’re next to each other really, you know. There’s an incredible strength to a still picture. Or there can be an incredible strength to a still picture that can outlive you. That can outlive a film.

I’m used to depending on my gut feeling in photography, and it’s a very low-key and quick way of working. With film-making you pretty much have to put aside a whole year of your life. That can be tough, but the great thing is that you may end up creating something that a lot of people will see.

My learning process in photography has stagnated, but with film-making, I have had to learn how to tell a story, and I’m sure this new knowledge will be beneficial for my photography in the end.

Corbijn on Photography Technique

I work using the Brian Eno school of thinking: limit your tools, focus on one thing and just make it work… You become very inventive with the restrictions you give yourself.

I’m a very, very basic photographer. The main strength of my pictures, I guess, is the mood and feel I get out of the people that I meet. But technically I don’t think I’m very advanced. That never interested me.

I don’t have lights, I don’t have assistants, I just go and meet somebody and take a photograph. That’s really basic, and that’s how I used to work when I was 17 or 18 in Holland.

I take my work seriously, but there is also a lot of fun involved in these pictures. People dress up or do silly things. It’s partly because I don’t arrive with a big team. I just go around with a camera and maybe I have my assistant with me, but that’s it. So it doesn’t feel like I’m invading much of their world or threatening them.

The blurriness and the grain that I use, for me, is close to life. I find things that are very static and very sharp and very well-lit and all that is not how I experience life.

My work is not quite perfect. Perhaps it still contains something of life. Because perfection often prevents the work from breathing.

I feel the imperfection is much closer to how life is than perfection.

A photo doesn’t need to be perfect to fascinate.

I don’t crop my images and I always shoot handheld. By doing that I build in a kind of imperfection and this helps to emphasize reality.

Analog Photography and Digital

Analog is more beautiful than digital, really, but we go for comfort.

I still work in analogue. There are some elements of digital photography that I don’t really like, such as the fact that you see the results immediately. I’ve always thought photography was a bit of an adventure so to come home with the film, develop it then look at the results has more of a sense of excitement. Digital changes your end results because if you think it’s not totally there then you are going to shoot it differently – you get the perfect image but that kills it for me as I like the imperfection.

I am always wondering why people throw away film and go for video when they want video to look like film. It’s like if you want your CD to sound like vinyl, why throw away the vinyl? With photography I like a lot of the post-process to be digital but I like to shoot on film. So it’s the best of both worlds for me.

For square format I use a Hasselblad and for 35mm I use a Leica – they’re both beautiful cameras.

Photoshop is a different matter as it’s post-production really. It’s like an extension of your darkroom so I have no problem with it – although you do see many examples of it being used badly. I’m trying to get to grips with it. With the whole digital thing I sometimes feel like everyone’s been driving cars and I’ve been taking the bus. Inevitably, I’ll have to change at some point as I feel that companies are investing more in digital technology now so you’re left with paper and film that are no longer as good. I took a beautiful picture of Nelson Mandela recently, which we worked on for a week in Photoshop until it ended up a perfect picture, but it had lost all the soul … so we printed the original.

What’s your Favorite Anton Corbijn Quote?

Have a favorite quote from the list? Know any other Anton Corbijn quotes that would make a great addition to the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others.

To learn more about Anton Corbijn’s photography head over to his official website or follow him on Instagram.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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Ellen Von Unwerth Quotes

I like to photograph anyone before they know what their best angles are.

I’m into capturing the moment. Sometimes, I’ll rip the camera out of my assistant’s hands and he’ll be shouting, “But there’s no film in the camera!” and I think, “Never mind! Let’s go.

Fashion is provocative and bold – and to create art there really needs to be a certain amount of freedom.

To be honest, I have always loved to shoot in black-and-white whenever I can. I just think it has more emotion, and it’s timeless, and it just fits better with my pictures.

Sometimes when you have somebody in front of the camera you catch another side to them and you can really see the human being.

Technique undoubtedly helps make photography magical, but I prefer to work with atmosphere. I think that the obsession with technique is a male thing. Boy’s toys. They love playing… but once you’ve perfected something you have to start searching for a new toy. I would rather search for a new model or location.

Everybody thinks they’re a photographer nowadays. It’s a bit of a problem sometimes. Everybody is not a photographer. You have to have an idea, you have to have a notion of lighting, how to capture moments. You know, it’s an art.

Ellen Von Unwerth on Models

I’ve always loved to portray women who are strong, who are playful, who are self-assured, and who really own their sexuality, which is why I love working with Claudia, and Naomi, and all those girls.

I love cinema from the ’50s and ’60s, mostly black and white films. I love Hitchcock, Fellini, I love the French actresses – Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren – the women really inspire me. For my pictures, I always make my girls look like movie stars.

[Von Unwerth on her dream subject] Marilyn Monroe (laughs). Can you imagine? She was my dream. If there’s one person in the world I would have loved to shoot, it would be her. She embodies everything I want to portray: vulnerability, sexuality, and strength… Imagine the cover!

I love beautiful women, I love to show their personality, their sexuality. It’s fashion photography, but with fewer clothes.

The women in my pictures are always strong, even if they are also sexy. My women always look self-assured. I try to make them look as beautiful as they can because every woman wants to feel beautiful, sexy and powerful. That’s what I try to do.

Working with Models

It’s part of my personality; I’m very open and to make jokes. We always have loud music. It’s all about the casting; I don’t ask all women to take off their clothes. It’s give and take. You have to know which girls will be on that wavelength. There’s a psychological game in coaxing models to relax. That’s the fun of it. It’s not just about taking the pictures, it’s also to do with communication and direction.

I don’t stand behind the camera drooling. Knowing that, the models are more likely to open up and relax.

When I was modeling, I was always told that I couldn’t move and I should look to the left and the right. When I started to be a photographer, I really encouraged my models to live in front of the camera. I give them roles to play. You get those moments where they show emotion and not just their physical beauty – that’s what I’m looking for.

I don’t want to objectify women, or cast them only in this ‘sexy’ light. I want to see every side of them. There are so many sid-none d-lg-none to women. That’s why some of my best shots come when the girls think the camera has stopped rolling, you’re seeing something different to what they give you when they know they’re being watched, a vulnerability.

There is always a little bit of humor in my pictures and maybe a little bit of a parody of femininity. Girls love to look beautiful and be sexy in front of the camera, especially when it’s with another woman.

I like to go big and wild! I want the models to be silly in front of the camera, I want them to live their life!

Quotes on Camera Phones and Selfies

It’s not special any more to be a photographer. Even when I take a picture, everybody stands next to me and takes the same picture. Five minutes later it’s on everyone else’s Instagram and I’m old news – so I’m forced to take pictures on my iPhone too.

It’s ok to take selfies from time to time, but it annoys me so much to see people walking down the street holding a camera or phone in front of them. I find it sad and, even with people who I really respect, when I see that their Instagram feed is just selfies, it makes me think ‘is that what you’re really all about? Don’t you have anything else to say?’ It’s a sign of the time. Something else will come along.

I find it crazy how women photograph themselves all the time. When I was a girl and looked in the mirror, my stepmother would come in and give me a slap. There was this idea that if you did that, the devil would get in you and steal your personality. Now everyone does this. I ask models sometimes, ‘Do you have to take so many selfies?’ And they say: ‘Only when I take selfies do I get likes.’ It’s sad! Narcissism is so celebrated in our society, sometimes people lose interest in other people.

Quotes on Pushing the Boundaries

I’m a kind of a rebellious character and I love to push the boundaries… I like to give people the freedom to express themselves. I love to bring out the personality and a little bit of the devil, a little bit of something naughty.

It’s good to shock. It’s not good to always be careful. It’s good to disturb a little.

I always give them something to do.When somebody’s not moving I get bored. I take two pictures and I say: ‘Great, I have it now.’ But I love the body in movement. I like the nude body in movement.

Objectifying is about the body; it’s showing the body in a sexy position. To me, the body is great, but it’s about expression and movement. To me, it’s very much in the eyes – most sex appeal, for me, comes from the eyes. It’s more about her personality, than just the body.

I love all the old pictures – of spanking and Bettie Page and corsets. But you can’t do spanking in fashion, so I wanted to do a project where I could really let go and get girls who also love those things.

A sexy picture can come from anyone who forms an intimacy with their subject. You can take a sexy picture of your cat if you want to.

There are so many rules these days with magazines – you cannot do this or that, or they wouldn’t choose the best pictures. So I thought, Why don’t I put my money and energy into my own thing so that every page is exactly how I want it and so I can push the boundaries. Because you can’t really do that these days. It is a fun way to push the boundaries and to go kind of punky and dirty.

What’s your Favorite Ellen Von Unwerth Quote?

Have a favorite Ellen Von Unwerth quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Like the article? Share it with other photographers.

To see more of Von Unwerth’s photography, check out her website and follow her on Instagram.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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The post 28 Ellen Von Unwerth Quotes on Fashion and Models appeared first on Photogpedia.

If you haven’t done so already, we recommend reading our Terence Donovan master profile article to learn more about his brilliant fashion and portrait photography, techniques, cameras and much more.

Terence Donovan Quotes

The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the photograph isn’t what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organized visual lying.

I was always much more interested in doing the thing than being the thing. I was much more interested in photography than being a photographer.

When I first started, I thought that if I took enough frames, I’d get a good picture. Photographs are taken with the brain, the camera records it, but it’s a meta-physical process because what happens in an image is beyond what you see. And the problem with amateurs is that they’re too busy with the technical side. It’s the head that makes pictures and the cameras record the thought. You’ve got to be able to read the images.

When you’re young, you go on assignment, somebody steams into your pictures and it tears your guts out, you know. And you defend them. I don’t defend my work, never again. I hope you like it, I’ve tried hard. I’ve tried my best but if you don’t like it…

The problem for an amateur is that they have no reason to take a photograph.

Learning the Craft

I was a blockmaker, making printing plates and it taught me the fundamentals of exposure. On any film shoot, in any situation, within reason, I’m never more than a stop out. I can look at anybody’s face and say, 1/30 at 2.8. And if I am out, it will be a stop over, which is always the right way to be. And that was all from that training.

You have to make it look easy when you’re photographing people; have a dialogue going. You can’t hide behind your camera. When I was 15, I was shy, so I used to make myself go up to people to photograph them. I’d do anything that frightened me. And now I say to young photographers, ‘Don’t try and sneak pictures on a 100mm lens, get a 35 on and walk up to them.’

[On immitators] Look at them, running off 90 rolls of film in the hope that one of them will have a picture on it. Not one of them has seen the inside of a darkroom and most of the buggers don’t know how to load a fucking camera.

I’ve tried to keep my eyes and ears open in my life, be a bit receptive. That’s why I go and photograph where all those kids are dancing. It’s interesting. Too many people of my age are too locked off. You can look old, but you don’t have to be old. [Norman] Parkinson was 73 but he was not an old man, he was a wild man, sparky.

Creativity and Photography

There’s a lot of difference between an advertising photographer and a photographer. When I used to work for Elle magazine in France, the art director never told me what to do. You had to work it out for yourself. In Paris, there was Helmut Newton in one studio and Guy Bourdin in the other. They’re photographers, man. They weren’t nicking anything off of anybody. I watched Guy Bourdin and there’s no more way I could take a photograph like Guy than fly…

When I did my 900th interview about that Robert Palmer video Addicted to Love someone asked me where I got the idea from and I said, ‘I did something rather odd… I thought of it!’ It seems to be a rather old-fashioned thing to do.

Dedication, Hard Work and Passion Quotes

I used to get up at eight o’clock, work in the studio from nine until seven at night, go out and have a bite, come back at nine, develop all the negatives of the day, contact them and go home at 1.30. That’s how you learn how to do the job. You know what they say in the SAS, ‘Train hard, fight easy’.

Photography is a militaristic operation; you’ve got to be organised. Most people aren’t organised.

Then a few weeks later I was at the Royal College of Art and after I’d studied their work in the morning, we had some lunch and then sat down to talk. And then a girl got up and I said, ‘Where are you going?’ And she said, ‘To get coffee.’ So, I said, ‘You’ve just had lunch.’ And then the German next to me said, ‘Zis isn’t ze military now you know.’ And so I said, ‘And you can f*ck off as well!’ But do you see what that illustrates?”

What you’ve got to understand about Bailey and me is, we were fantastically hard working. Bailey and I never wanted to be successful photographers. That wasn’t the plot. We weren’t ambitious, ever. We just wanted to do it.

My first darkroom was a cupboard and I couldn’t afford a red light, so I used to have a bit of cloth handy and the cloth used to catch fire. But by God I wanted to do it.

Don’t do it if you want to be famous. As long as people leave college and they don’t want to buy a car out of photography, or don’t want to get a flat in Mayfair, if they just want to be photographers… If they have passion and if they have got something to say, they’ll make it.

It’s always been a tough job, Cecil Beaton was a tough old boy, Parkinson was a tough old boy, Eve Arnold’s a tough woman. Not a job for somebody light on bottle, I’ll tell you, photography. Not when you think of what can go wrong.

You’ve got to try hard not to develop the vague notion you might be of some consequence. ‘Cos if you manage that, you’re free from the tyranny of it. You see that a million times, people that really think they’ve cracked it and then it comes slamming out of the woodwork at them. Judo teaches you that, some skinny little bloke you think, Oh, he’s nothing and the next thing you’re lying on your back. It’s much more to do with the philosophy of life than anything to do with photography.

You don’t do something like this for money. I’ve never met anyone who’s succeeded in life purely because they wanted the cash.

Donovan on Art and Photography

Photography, for me, isn’t art. It’s specific. You can have things in photographs that are emotive, a crying child by a car crash or something, but that’s not the photograph, that’s the content that’s emotive.

Because I paint and take photographs, I think photography is a craft because it doesn’t attack you. That’s why I don’t have many exhibitions. I think exhibitions are quite dull, personally. I don’t know why. I like photographs. I like looking at them but how many times have you come out of an exhibition and gone, Phew!?

When old Avedon had that exhibition of stuff, you know, 15 foot high prints, well it was just graphics to me, and the weakness of graphics is it’s studied. Whereas if you look at a painting by Lucien Freud, skilled as it is, there’s a bit of mad vibrancy about it all. Or Bacon, insanity on the paper, but I love it because I don’t know where it came from and it mystifies me.

Terence Donovan Quotes about Equipment

Serious musicians like to hear their music played on LP as opposed to CD. Whoever’s in charge of the show upstairs, he’s got a wicked sense of humour because as they give it to you, the progress and new ideas, they take something away. You know what I mean?

Amateur photographers have got a problem because they’ve got no reason to take a picture. They’re kind of equipment junkies. When you look at a picture that Cartier-Bresson took on a 50mm…

Don’t buy a Hasselblad unless you have a tripod and an assistant. If you drop the magazine, it tends to be embarrassing, like trying to spoon up your guacamole in Acapulco. When I see a Hampstead gynaecologist on holiday festooned with a Hasselblad and lenses and no tripod, I know he is a photographer wanker.

You can’t stop technology; you don’t want to stop technology. But if you get one of these advanced modern cameras and you’re photographing a girl in a black suit against a black background you’d better switch everything off and get out the meter and take a reading. If you don’t do that, old love, you’re snookered because most of those guys that design cameras, one thing they never do is use them.

What’s your Favorite Terence Donovan Quote?

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If you would like to learn more about Terence Donovan’s photography, we recommend reading our Terence Donovan master profile article. To see more of Donovan’s work, check out the image archive on Terence Donovan website.

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If you haven’t done so already, we recommend reading our Herb Ritts master profile article to learn more about his incredible fashion and portrait photography, as well as his lighting technique, cameras and much more.

Herb Ritts Quotes

I like form and shape and strength in pictures.

Each time I did assignments or editorials, I realized that I wanted to do something more. I saw that it wasn’t just about the clothes.

The work with moving images is all part of the same proposition. The filmmaking can feed off the fine art photography; the fine art photography can nurture a commercial project.

To me it’s just going for the moment that counts. Sometimes, I’ll have all the elements there, and I like to play and push something, and to me, in the end, you do achieve things that you’re not aware of in the beginning, even though you’re there trying to get them.

I’m pretty selective. I generally edit the contact sheets and then do work prints. Because I have my own lab and printers, I can afford the luxury of going through the contact sheets for black-and-white, making up work prints, seeing them big, and honing them down.

Herb Ritts Quotes for Better Photography

I think a lot of the time these days people are so concerned about having the right camera and the right film and the right lenses and all the special effects that go along with it, even the computer, that they’re missing the key element. That element is developing a style that’s yours and experimenting with it until you eventually discover what makes sense to you.

You have to remember that the decisive moment is when you’re shooting. I’m not sure how it was in the past, but think, for example, of the moment when Cartier-Bresson captured that picture of the man bicycling in silhouette: That’s what he called the decisive moment, that’s the picture.

Feel your surroundings. Try and develop a style. Don’t get caught up in the technical side of things. Feel what is right in terms of light, subject, and composition. Dare to experiment, catch a moment.

You’re trying to get to one moment with one frame that eventually may speak for your generation.

Ritts on Lighting and Locations

Coming from California and growing up where I did, I’ve always had a fondness for and innate sensitivity to light, texture, and warmth.

Within two hours of where I live, you have mountains and desert as location. I like the natural elements that abstract into light, texture, shape and shadow

I abstract it in my photographs: I like large planes and spaces, areas of texture and light, like deserts or oceans or monumental places.

Herb Ritts Quotes on Portraits

I can have a given situation set up, but it’s catching that moment – allowing them to be themselves – and capturing something that’s special.

For me, a portrait is something from which you feel the person, their inner quality, what it is that makes them who they are. For instance, in the hand of the Dalai Lama donning his prayer beads in the window light; you feel his spirituality, his sense of presence.

The most interesting people to photograph are elderly. George Wallace, Bukowski, William Burroughs, Rauschenberg, Mandela. They’ve lived their lives. It’s all in their face, and it shows.

Today a lot of things are so celebrity-oriented; it’s only because it’s celebrity and the photograph is lost. To me it’s important to have an image that is a photograph first, not about necessarily who that person is.

Regardless of whether you speak the language or are familiar with a culture, the picture should hold up.

It’s not the celebrity quality of the person that makes the photograph interesting. It’s letting the true person through which makes the photograph interesting and lasting.

Learning the Craft Quotes

For me, the most important thing I learned was just honing my eye. I think I had a good eye.

I’d go down to the end of my street, to a garage that had a certain feeling about it, or a particular light; I’d take a picture of a friend who needed a head shot. That’s how I learned, instead of having school assignments and learning camera techniques.

I always enjoyed art history because, growing up in California, my exposure was limited, and it was a new experience. To learn the history of art opened up certain things to me, made me see. It intrigued me.

I exposed myself to museums. I suddenly saw, for instance, the vision of a Man Ray, discovered more and more the history of photography. It put things in perspective. But it was at least four years or more before I started feeling a sense of my own style.

To learn the history of art opened up certain things to me, made me see. It intrigued me.

Many people who excel are self-taught.

What’s your Favorite Herb Ritts Quote?

Have a favorite Herb Ritts quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc).

If you would like to learn more about Ritts’ photography, we recommend reading our Herb Ritts master profile article. To see more of his remarkable portraits and fashion photos, check out the image archive on the Herb Ritts Foundation website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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• Irving Penn Quotes
• Horst P Horst Quotes
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• 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes

The post 24 Herb Ritts Quotes to Level Up Your Photography appeared first on Photogpedia.

Despite a career that lasted only twenty-four years, Ritts was remarkably prolific.

Ritts photographed everyone from supermodels Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford, to Hollywood legends Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Cruise to music icons Madonna and Michael Jackson.

You’re trying to get to one moment with one frame that eventually may speak for your generation.

Herb Ritts

The LA-based photographer lensed campaigns for leading fashion designers such as Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Valentino, and Versace and produced editorial and cover photos for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair, and many others leading fashion and cultural magazines.

Later in his career, Ritts started directing motion and shot over 50 television commercials and 13 music videos.

His first music video was for Madonna’s song Cherish in 1987, this was followed by Chris Isaak’s Wicked Games and Janet Jackson’s, Love Will Never Do (Without You).

His fine art photography has been the subject of exhibitions worldwide, with works residing in significant public and private collections. He also one of the most collected photographers around with his prints fetching anywhere between $40,000-$190,000.

Ritts revolutionized fashion photography, modernized the nude, and transformed celebrities into icons.

Paul Martineau (Getty museum)

Editor’s Note: This is a long article, so feel free to skip ahead using the table of contents below to whatever section interests you. If you’ve enjoyed the article, then we’d be grateful if you could share it through the usual social media channels.

Related: 24 Herb Ritts Quotes to Level Up Your Photography

Herb Ritts Biography

Nationality: American
Genre/s: Fashion, Portrait, Nude, Fine Art, Advertising, Music Videos
Born: August 13, 1952 – Los Angeles, California
Died: December 26, 2002 (aged 50) – Los Angeles, California

Early Life

Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Ritts grew up in a prosperous Jewish family. His father, Herb Ritts Snr., owned a furniture business, while his mother, Shirley Ritts was an interior designer.

Ritts and his brother and sister grew up in Brentwood, California. Their nearest neighbor was the legendary Hollywood star, Steve McQueen.

We grew up in Brentwood, in West L.A. At the time, when I was a young boy in the fifties and sixties, it was a very low-key place to grow up. It was upper-middle-class; not suburban, but not Hollywood, either. I did grow up next door to Steve McQueen, who was a very famous movie star at the time, but as a kid, it didn’t impress me. We always had great fun with him. He would take us out on Sundays on his motorcycles, riding around in the desert; he was like a second father. My father was a furniture designer and manufacturer, and my mother worked with him in the sales and interior design side of the business. So they weren’t in the film business at all – only through Steve McQueen and other people they knew. An Elvis Presley movie, Blue Hawaii, had a lot of the Ritts Company rattan furniture in it. It was very popular.

Herb Ritts

Ritts graduated from Palisades High School in Los Angeles in 1970 and then attended Bard College in upstate New York, where he studied economics and art history.

I was an economics major, which I enjoyed because I had a good business sense. Even though I didn’t get a business degree, I enjoyed learning about economics. I dabbled in school. I always enjoyed art history because growing up in California, my exposure was limited, and it was a new experience. To learn the history of art opened up certain things to me, made me see. It intrigued me.

Moving back to L.A.

After a brief period living in New York, Ritts returned to Los Angeles, where he worked as a sales representative in the family’s furniture business for the next few years.

In 1976, Ritts purchased his first camera (a 35mm Miranda for $152) and started to take portraits of his circle of friends – which was made up of young actors, models, and other artistic types.

Although Ritts was a good salesman, the job didn’t satisfy him creatively, and he began taking evening courses in photography at the Art Centre of College of Design in Pasadena.

While Ritts promoted the idea that he stumbled upon a career in photography by accident, the truth is that he was actively looking for ways to become a professional photographer.

In 1978, Ritts managed to talk his way on to the set of the film, The Champ and took some of the film stills. When one of his photos of John Voight and Ricky Shroder was published in Newsweek, Ritts started to think that he might be able to turn photography into his full-time career.

Meeting Richard Gere

Ritts met the then-unknown actor Richard Gere through Gere’s girlfriend at the time – their friendship would help launch the career of both men.

On a road trip in the desert, Ritts photographed Gere at a gas station, while waiting for a tire to be changed. These photographs, used by Gere’s publicist two years later, played an important role in Gere’s rise to stardom and gave Herb his big break.

I knew Richard’s girlfriend, Penny, who was an actress, and she introduced me to Richard. Actually, when I first started dabbling in photography, I was still working for my parents as a salesman. Penny was supposed to come to my house to take a headshot, but she never showed. Richard arrived; he was going to meet her there. I asked if I could take a picture of him, and he said no-he was very shy and had very long hair-but finally I did. A week or so later, we were driving around in Penny’s car and got a flat tire and ended up in a desert gas station, where we took pictures.

Herb Ritts

Ritts’s Big Break

I think that the interesting thing about this first picture of Richard is that it’s on a real location. I realized instinctively, even then; you have to go for that moment you’re in. There’s something compositional about the place where I was shooting Richard. This is an all-white background here; I crouched down to shoot upward, which gave a little more impact and drama. I can’t honestly say if I told Richard to put his hands behind his head, or if he just did it to stretch and I caught it. And he would have been smoking a lot then anyway. A lot of this is really what he was: young, very handsome, sexy-one of those “rebel” actors, and it showed. At the same time, though, he had incredible vulnerability, and in some of the other pictures from that series he’s very innocent, in his eyes.

Ritts’s big break came in 1979, when his photos of the budding actor were published in Mademoiselle, Esquire, and Vogue – all in the same month.

He had well-known photographers shooting him already; it happened quickly for him. So, I sent the negatives and forgot about it. What did I know? I wasn’t a photographer. Three months later, the pictures appeared in American Vogue, Esquire, and Mademoiselle. Big spreads. One day soon thereafter, Mademoiselle tracked me down and asked me to do Brooke Shields, and I said sure. I didn’t say I wasn’t a photographer.

Learning on the Job

The strength of the pictures, which present Gere as a new American hero was instantly recognized and job offers soon followed.

Shortly after his first photos were published, Ritts began to seriously collect photographs. His early purchases included prints from masters such as Man Ray, Paul Outerbridge, and Edward Weston.

Collecting photos helped Ritts develop his photography skills – specifically understanding framing and composition, as well as the importance of quality prints – these lessons on the craft would serve him well as he started his career as a photographer.

I exposed myself to museums. I suddenly saw, for instance, the vision of a Man Ray, discovered more and more the history of photography. It put things in perspective. But it was at least four years or more before I started feeling a sense of my own style.

Photography Career

Ritts purchased a home in the Hollywood hills and rented some of the rooms to help with the cost of the mortgage – top male fashion model Matt Collins was one of his housemates. Collins introduced Ritts to the New York photographer Bruce Weber, who gave Ritts advice when he was getting started.

In ’78 I bought a house in California, the same house where I live now. I decided to rent rooms out to help with the mortgage, and one of the renters was Matt Collins. He was one of the top male models at the time-very refined-looking. I remember several red trunks of Italian menswear arriving at my house from Italian Bazaar on behalf of a girl I didn’t even know. Someone had shown her a few snapshots, and she took a chance because she really liked what she saw. She turned out to be the fashion director of Italian Bazaar.

Fashion Photography

In an early fashion spread for Harper’s Bazaar Italia, Ritts photographed Collins under the Santa Monica Pier. These images demonstrate Ritts’s use of the golden Southern California light and strong cast shadows, two hallmarks of his photographic style.

Matt and I went underneath the Santa Monica Pier and shot. He did his hair, he put on the clothes, I took the pictures, he held the meter. I shipped the photographs back with the clothes to Milan and next thing I knew they were the lead story in Italian Bazaar, twenty pages. That’s where Ferre, and Franca Sozzani from Lei, saw my pictures. Matt was influential in that he’d already been in the business. He was very good friends with Bruce Weber.

While the project wasn’t more than a straightforward fashion shoot, it gave Ritts the opportunity to hone his skills and raised his profile with Italian fashion magazine editors.

Finding his Style

Ritts made use of the bright California sunlight to produce images that play with light and shadow, and his preference for outdoor locations such as the desert and the beach helped to separate his work from his New York-based peers.

In a short period of time, Ritts became one of the world’s most requested fashion, portrait, and advertising photographers.

In 1981, Ritts photographed Olivia Newton-John for her album Physical. Five years later he replicated that cover pose with Madonna for her album True Blue.

Ritts first met Madonna in 1984 on the set of Desperately Seeking Susan. This meeting would lead to many collaborations and a long-time friendship between the two.

In his sweet disarming way, he suggested that we work together again, and I agreed to it. And that was the beginning of an incredibly long and fruitful working relationship, but it was also the beginning of a great friendship.

Madonna

By 1984, Ritts was on fire. His creative output was non-stop, and he appeared to be able to switch gears effortlessly between personal and commercial work (fashion, advertising, and portraits).

In 1985, Ritts exhibited his photographs in a gallery setting for the first time in a three-person show titled, Working in L.A.

In Demand

Ritts’s distinctive style was in demand, and the globalization of the media helped to export his photos around the world.

To accommodate his growing business, Ritts established a studio (formerly Gene Kelly’s dance studio) on the corner of Hudson Street and Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood in 1987. Many of his iconic photos were created on the studios’ flat roof, where Ritts had a rotating wall built that pivoted toward or away from the sunlight.

Ritts had a great business mind and knew how to direct people. He enjoyed what he was doing and assembled a crew of talented assistants and printers who worked hard to exceed his high expectations.

Ritts used both color and black and white film for his commercial assignments, although he tended to reserve the latter for his personal work or fine art photography.

Ritts rarely printed his own photos. From a financial perspective, it didn’t make sense for him to spend his time in the darkroom. At the height of career, Ritts had a contract valued at $1 million a year with Conde Nast and could earn as much as $40,000 a day plus expenses on other projects.

Like all greats, Ritts wasn’t afraid to take chances with his work and sometimes his clients didn’t accept his decisions.

His fashion pictures of Naomi Campbell wearing nothing more than a pair of thigh-high leather boots were rejected by American Vogue. Ritts was confident that these photos were amongst his best work and arranged to have them published in Interview magazine instead.

Finding a Publisher

While Ritts had a reputation as one of the best fashion and portrait photographers in the business, getting recognition for the artistic merit of his work was difficult.

Since he didn’t have the backing he would later enjoy through the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, which published Herb Ritts: Work in 1996, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Ritts negotiated a deal with Twin Palms Publishers to release his first book, Pictures in 1988. The book sold well and was the beginning of what would become a very profitable publishing program between the two, resulting in a total of seven books.

By the late 80s, Ritts had become a celebrity himself, largely due to his reputation as a shaper of fame as well as his role in ushering the era of the supermodel.

Leaving a Legacy

In 1989, Ritts’s life was changed radically. That was the year he learned that he had AIDS; as a result, he became even more focused on his work and took on more and more projects including a major GAP campaign.

He just went into overdrive. I don’t know if it was a sense of, ‘If I’ve got something to do, I’ve gotta do it now and leave it as my legacy.’ Or if it was, ‘I’m going to keep working so I don’t think about this.

Richard Gere

That year he also produced his iconic photo of the supermodels in Hollywood.

The shoot for Rolling Stones magazine initially included the cast of four models: Tatjana, Naomi, Cindy, and Stephanie. Christy was invited at the last minute to complete the photo. Ritts positioned the models so that they were intertwined and embraced effortlessly.

Music Videos

In 1989, Ritts was convinced by Madonna to direct his first music video for her song, Cherish.

She kept asking me, and I said I really didn’t know the first thing about moving imagery. Finally, I practiced with a little super 8 camera when I was on a job in Hawaii and came back and said I could do it. Two weeks later, I was filming Cherish. I directed it and did the camera work as well. It was invigorating. I realized I could put my stamp on moving imagery, which some people have a hard time doing. The more you experience, the better you become, and the mix of working with varied visual mediums hones your eye even more so.

Herb Ritts

Cherish was shot at Paradise Cove Beach in Malibu, California. In the video, Madonna plays herself, while three men dressed as mermen swim in and out of the sea.

Ritts used a hand-held camera and shot it using color film, but the water was so cold that it drained the color from Madonna’s skin, so they converted it to black-and-white instead.

Ritts enjoyed the creative challenge that motion presented and subsequently agreed to direct Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game in 1990.

Wicked Game

For Wicked Game, Ritts paired Isaak up with model Helena Christensen and filmed the video in Hawaii on a black lava beach near an active volcano.

Isaak thought that the video was so steamy that MTV would refuse to air it. Not only did MTV air the video, but they awarded the video three awards at the MTV music awards in 1991: Best Male Video, Best Cinematography in Video, and Best Video from a Film.

We shot that video (Wicked Game) and we should not have been there. Some people think that behind me is a blue screen of smoke or something. That’s volcanic flow going into the ocean causing steam to boil up about 30 feet behind me. And every once and a while, a ball of lava would shoot up into the air about 200 feet and we just kept shooting. You know Herb would just go ‘OK, we’ll just keep shooting.’ It still breaks my heart that he’s gone. If you saw it though Herb Ritts’ eye the world was a much nicer place.

Chris Isaak

His next music video was Janet Jackson’s Love Will Never Do (Without You).

Ritts chose the desert as the setting for the video and matched Jackson up with two of his favorite male models.

Ritts and his director of photography, Rolf Kesterman incorporated the photographer’s signature style into the video: using graceful movements, bold contrasts, and wide-open spaces.

The work with moving images is all part of the same proposition. The filmmaking can feed off the fine art photography; the fine art photography can nurture a commercial project.

Herb Ritts

Love Will Never Do (Without You) won the “Best Female Video” category at the MTV Music Awards in 1991.

Video Production

Suddenly in demand as a director of music videos and commercials, Ritts co-founded a video production company with friend Bill Hayden. While Ritts focussed on the creative side, Hayden took care of the business end of the company.

Ritts directed thirteen music videos over his career and more than fifty commercials. Some of his music industry clients were Michael Jackson, Shakira, Mariah Carey, and Britney Spears. His commercial clients were mainly fashion or personal product companies such as Cartier, Chanel, Estee Lauder, and Calvin Klein.

Ritts’s commercials for Calvin Klein were so successful that the brand continued to use his stylistic formula long after his death.

The 1990s

In 1990, Ritts photographed two of his most striking and original fashion images for a Versace campaign.

Versace Dress, Back View, El Mirage was shot on location in a dry lakebed, ninety miles northeast of Los Angeles.

To create the black tunnel-like shape that surrounds the Christy Turlington, Ritts hung a tarp on a large metal frame and used wind machines to blow it out. The graphic quality of the image and the unusual oval shape created by the tarps recalls still life’s made during the 1920s using eggs and light bulbs.

While this image was carefully planned and constructed, Versace Veiled Dress, El Mirage was the result of a happy accident and adapting to environmental challenges.

We were out in the desert, and this gale-force win blew up. You could hardly stand. And I just flipped the dress over her head, or it started to go that way and then I just let it do what it was doing… nature was happening. She [Naomi Campbell] just stood there very stoic, and it made such a classic image… it’s a little unorthodox for fashion, but it made such an interesting photograph.

Herb Ritts

Like so many photographers before him, Ritts used nature to create two unforgettable images that portray feminine strength and beauty.

The statuesque poses of the models play off the harsh desert environment to give his majestic pictures a timeless quality, one which evokes images of stone monuments of ancient Egypt.

Mature Period

Ritts visited East Africa in January 1993, returning in summer to take pictures of daily life for his project Africa.

Generally, they were trusting and curious and they let me into their way of life. They are just what happened: daily life. I never knew what was going to come up day by day.

Herb Ritts

Later that year, Ritts’s controversial photograph of Cindy Crawford and -the recently out of the closet lesbian singer – k.d. Lang was featured on the cover of the August 1993 issue of Vanity Fair.

In 1996, Ritts hurt his back, limiting his ability to hold his heavy Mamiya RZ camera.

Rather than using a tripod, he charged his assistant Erik Asla with supporting the camera for him. This enabled Ritts to still enjoy the fluid movement of the camera without having to strain himself.

One of his most memorable commercial projects from the period was for the Swiss watchmaker, TAG Heuer.

To launch a new line of watches, the company invited Ritts to create a series of artistic nudes featuring top athletes from around the world – the executives in charge gave him complete freedom with the project.

In 1999, Ritts developed cytomegalovirus (CMW) and almost went blind. Despite the challenges he faced daily, he found ways to continue working: unable to drive, he had his assistants drive him to work, and during a shoot, they would double-check the focus on the camera lens for him.

Nevertheless, Ritts continued to receive numerous assignments. He accepted a major commission for Ralph Lauren, then worked on a substantial portrait project for HBO.

Last Project and Death

In December 2002, Ritts photographed Ben Affleck for the March 2003 issue of Vanity Fair. This would prove to be his final photo shoot.

The location was one of Ritts’s favorite, the dry-lake bed in El Mirage, California. On the day of the shoot, the wind was blowing hard, stirring up a tremendous amount of dust. Some of the crew involved became ill; Ritts was among them.

Due to his compromised immune system (weakened by AIDS), Ritts was unable to fight the infection and developed pneumonia. He died a week later, on December 26, 2002, at the age of fifty.

Legacy

Ritts published a total of 7 books in his lifetime: Pictures (1988), Men/Women (1989), Duo (1991), Notorious (1992), Africa (1994), Work (1996), and Herb Ritts (1999).

His books led to institutional backing from The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1996. The release of Herb Ritts: Work was accompanied by an exhibition of Ritts’s photographs at the museum, which was seen by over a quarter of a million people.

Ritts subsequently had many exhibitions worldwide and continues to do so many years after his death.

In 2012, the book L.A. Style was released alongside an exhibition of Ritts’s work at J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Ritts was selected to photograph the Pirelli Calendar on two occasions: 1994 and 1999.

For the 1994 calendar, Ritts photographed supermodels: Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen, Kate Moss, and Karen Alexander. The calendar titled, A Homage to Women set out to capture the women of the 90s.

In 1999, he photographed twelve top models, with each model representing a different decade of the 20th Century from the can-can girl of the Belle Époque (Chandra North) up to the year 2000 and beyond (Alek Wek).

Ritts was committed to HIV/AIDS-related causes and contributed to many charitable organizations including amfAR, Focus on AIDS, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, Project Angel Food, APLA, Best Buddies, and the Special Olympics. Ritts was also a charter member for The Elton John AIDS Foundation.

The Herb Ritts Foundation was formed in 2003 following his wishes to advance the art of photography and to support HIV/AIDs in the spirit in which he lived.

Ritts’s Style

• Clean, minimal aesthetic
• Shape, form, and lines
• Use of environment and landscapes
• Natural light, bold contrast, and shadows
• Mainly black and white

Influences

Ritts has gone on record to say he was influenced by the following:

Photography: Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Martin Munkasci, Man Ray, Philippe Halsman, George Hurrell, Horst P Horst, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Edward Weston, and August Sander

Art: Botticelli, Umberto Boccioni, and Salvador Dali

Ritts draws on many influences that are both photographic and from old Hollywood. He had a great appreciation of beauty and elegance and took inspiration from painting and sculpture for his fashion work. Ritts admired Salvador Dali and would often try to incorporate surrealist elements into nude and fashion shots. 

To learn the history of art opened up certain things to me, made me see. It intrigued me.

Herb Ritts

Edward Weston’s sleek modernist forms, Man Ray’s experimental photographs… and the suggestive sensuality in Horst P. Horst’s nudes… Herb’s photographs… were inspired by a subtle blending of the best qualities of the photographers he admired. But Herb’s work, made from his own vision, was undeniably unique and authentic.

David Fahey

What Camera Did Herb Ritts Use?

Mamiya RZ Pro II + Mamiya Z 150mm F3.5
Kodak Tri-X Pan Professional 320 (Rated at 250)
Nikon F3 + Nikon 85mm F2 AI-S

Ritts’s main camera for his fashion and portraiture work was a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II medium-format film camera with 220 back and a Sekor 150mm f3.5 lens. He would typically shoot at F5.6 or F8.

Note: Some websites claim he used the 180mm lens, but this simply wasn’t the case. He used the Sekor 150mm F3.5 (35mm equivalent of 75mm).

What’s incredible is that all these photos in this article are shot using the focal range of 75-85mm.

I think a lot of the time these days people are so concerned about having the right camera and the right film and the right lenses and all the special effects that go along with it, even the computer, that they’re missing the key element. That element is developing a style that’s yours and experimenting with it until you eventually discover what makes sense to you.

Herb Ritts

His black and white film choice was Kodak Tri-X Pan Professional 320 (Rated at 250).

Ritts’s worked with three identical cameras (all the same setup). Once he finished a roll of film, an assistant would hand him another camera, this would allow him to keep up the pace of his photoshoot and capture that all-important “moment” without having to concern himself with changing film.

Ritts also used a Nikon F3 with motor drive and an 85mm F2 AI-S lens. He used the 35mm Nikon camera for work on the location when there was a lot of movement, such as his subject running towards him.

The first camera Ritts purchased was a Miranda for $152 in 1976. This is the same camera he used to shoot his now-iconic image of Richard Gere that gave him his first break in photography.

How to Shoot Like Herb

In 2002, Ritts was asked to give advice to young photographers, he replied:

Feel your surroundings. Try and develop a style. Don’t get caught up in the technical side of things. Feel what is right in terms of light, subject, and composition. Dare to experiment, catch a moment.

Ritts was a gifted photographer who was highly creative, an excellent communicator and had an exceptional understanding of the technical side of the craft – especially his use of light and shadow – but his ability to bridge the gap between art and commerce is what set him apart from other photographers of the day.

In his early years, Ritts followed in the footsteps of Bruce Weber, but soon developed his own photographic style incorporating the golden California sunlight and his Hollywood environment in his work.

When he was not in the studio with a white backdrop, he set up his compositions in the desert or on nearby beaches where the model could connect with the natural surroundings.

As a master of light, he favored bright California sunlight because it achieved a strong contrast of bold shadows and warm tones.

He had a genius for lighting, he had a genius for shape, and when you get all that into something it makes Herb Ritts a very special person, and as a photographer one of the best of all time.

Eric Buterbaugh

To get a better understanding of Ritts’s style and his approach to photography, I’ve pulled together the best quotes and excerpts from various interviews with Ritts over the years, along with comments from people that have worked with him.

I also recommend watching the short film documentary Herb Ritts: LA Style (below) produced by Getty in 2012.

Catching a Moment

I can have a given situation set up, but it’s catching that moment – allowing them to be themselves – and capturing something that’s special.

Herb Ritts

Ritts achieved a careful balance of glamorizing and humanizing his subjects within the same photo. Whether it was a movie star, musician, religious leader, or model, Herb Ritts had a way of getting to the “essence” of a subject.

When it came to the photoshoot, he never envisaged the final shot, preferring to find a rhythm together with the subject as they worked. This method created an opportunity for spontaneity and magic to happen between Ritts and his models.

You have to remember that the decisive moment is when you’re shooting. I’m not sure how it was in the past, but think, for example, of the moment when Cartier-Bresson captured that picture of the man bicycling in silhouette: That’s what he called the decisive moment, that’s the picture.

With portraits, you know something is right from what your eye is telling you. If this bubble was here, or if it was down here, or if his head was too low or too high, or if the shadows vary, or if the body was away from the wall-these are all elements you’re pondering when you’re working. There can be surprises, especially with movement, that you can’t predict. I’m open to surprises. I always leave room.

I remember once working all afternoon on a beach with Naomi Campbell, during a beauty shoot for Italian Vogue. After the shoot, we were walking up the steps on a cliff. It was twilight, the sun had set. We’d shot all day. I turned around, and she looked so gorgeous that I just stopped, took a few shots, and that’s what was printed. I’m glad I was open to seizing the moment.

Herb Ritts

Working with Subjects

Madonna describes the experience as being “Herbified.”

What does it mean to be Herbified: He talks you into going to the beach. Then, he talks you into taking off your clothes. He talks you into dancing and frolicking in the sand like an idiot. He talks you into getting into the freezing cold ocean, and before you know it, you have sunburn and you’re freezing your ass off and you’re sure you’ve just made a huge fool out of yourself.

Madonna

On the beach, Herb was incredible… the shoot that really stands out was the Playboy shoot. I almost didn’t go… I was nervous… but we had the best time, and the pictures were so incredible. Half the time when we worked with Herb, we wouldn’t even want to stop. Because once you get that rhythm going, you just don’t want to stop. You don’t want to break it.

Stephanie Seymour

It isn’t surprising therefore that Ritts became such close friends with those he photographed.

Working with Herb was more like just hanging out with a friend. We’d joke, chatter and gossip and at the end of the day, he would have captured the whole thing in the lens. He was a great guy.

David Bowie

I say this kindly, but I don’t see that many up-and-coming photographers with the same finesse, that understand the light so well, that understand film, that also understand how to communicate. But Herb was always so excited… You feel like you’re actually creating things together, and the great photographers all have that… And it was magical. That’s the best way I can describe Herb, it is always magical.

Tatjana Patitz

Portraits

When he was asked about his formula for success, Ritts replied:

It’s not the celebrity quality of the person that makes the photograph interesting. It’s letting the true person through which makes the photograph interesting and lasting.

Ritts would often complicate his portraits by making celebrities less than instantly recognizable. The ambiguity of the sitter’s identity gives his pictures a sense of mystery.

With Nicholson, for instance, what the magnifying glass did, quite by accident, was make even more of a caricature of him. He’s such a larger-than-life person, anyway, that if you magnify the one thing, his smile, his grin, it makes for even more of an impact. As to the mechanical aspect, with Stephen Hawking I photographed the back of his unique wheelchair; with Prince I photographed the stark mannequin he form – fits all of his clothes on. These objects speak about the person without them actually being present.

Related Article: 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes

For me, a portrait is something from which you feel the person, their inner quality, what it is that makes them who they are. For instance, in the hand of the Dalai Lama donning his prayer beads in the window light; you feel his spirituality, his sense of presence. Frequently, the most interesting people to photograph are elderly. George Wallace, Bukowski, William Burroughs, Rauschenberg, Mandela. They’ve lived their lives. It’s all in their face, and it shows.

Herb Ritts

Herb derived a style that delivered the perfect irony: the planned and posed images showing the subjects’ reality.

David Fahey

Herb’s Light

Ritts preferred outdoor locations such as the desert and the beach, which helped separate his work from other photographers.

Ritts was drawn to the environment and would often use the sea, sand, and sky as a backdrop in his images. By shooting on an outdoor location, he was also able to use the elements to help shape the light.

Herb had been raised with light, with the beaches, with the sun. Everybody before that was in the studio shooting and controlling everything. Suddenly he was able to take the same things outside and make people more natural and yet still have that glamour.

Charles Churchward

Ritts loved the golden California light. He liked strong contrast and hard light, which added more depth to his images and incredible texture and detail.

His lighting style was heavily influenced by Hollywood, and his method for lighting was more like a cinematographer than a photographer.

Herb Ritts’s Lighting Method

You just fall in love with that light – it’s Herb’s light.

Naomi Campbell

Ritts’s favorite time of day to shoot was between the hours of 3 and 6 PM when he was able to capture that magical California light.

His lighting was extremely simple: a single strong directional source, flags to block light and reflectors to fill in shadows.

Ritts used direct light with hard shadows. This can be accomplished in two ways: either by direct sunlight (Herb’s preferred method) or by use of Fresnel lights (also known as hot lights).

When I came on board as Herb’s regular lighting director on still shoots, I quickly understood what made him different. Herb was into hot lights. This terminology is big in the still world. It means lights that do not flash and create heat. Herb hated strobes. He loved looking through the viewfinder and seeing the light. He was able to orient a model’s face perfectly by being able to see the light, instead of taking a shot, then looking at it. He wanted to stay liquid. “Herb Liquid” was what we called it in the moment.

Shane Hurlburt

Use of Fresnel Lights

Ritts only used Fresnel lights to replicate the character of natural sunlight. Fresnel’s emulate the look of direct sunlight because they create a hard-edged shadow like the sun.

Traveling all over the world with Herb was absolutely incredible. Some of my best jobs to date have been with him. He inspired me to light, to look at a woman’s face and see which is the best side to light. I was blown away with how he would position his light, his HARD LIGHT. It became my mission to know where and when to position the light and from which side was best. Soon Herb did not have to say anything. We became so in sync as artists that he would show up, look at what I had set up and head back to make-up and hair.

Shane Hurlburt

Herb Ritts taught me how to light a face, how to make an actor comfortable, and how to deliver beauty with a unique look and feel.

Shane Hurlburt

Ritts also had plenty of fill light in his photographs:

When working with natural sunlight, Ritts’s fill would come from reflectors held by assistants. With Fresnel lights, the fill would come from indirect fill sources such as bouncing the light off reflectors, or walls.

Ritts used different light modifiers to shape light for both his location and studio work. These modifiers include scrims, diffusers, reflectors, snoots, grids, and flags.

Herb’s studio was large and well lit, with walls painted white. Ritts also had a folding wall built on the roof of the studio. The wall was on wheels, which meant it could be pivoted toward or away from sunlight as needed.

Shape and Form

Ritts’s hallmark style was uncluttered frames and clean lines, utilizing light and shadow as form. Ritts often borrowed from classical sculpture, and his study of art history is apparent from many of his photos.

In an interview with Playboy, Cindy Crawford said that while Ritts “had no sexual interest” in her, he could not wait to remove the clothes from his models because of his obsession with “line and geometry”.

That was evident in many of his pictures such as Backflip, in which the somersaulting body became an almost abstract, symmetrical design. The balance and order of his photographs were only enriched further by the contrasting element of mystery and spontaneity.

Take this Ritts’ photo from 1986. Ritts used black mud to cover the model’s face, hair, and torso, creating an image that’s reminiscent of ancient Greek bronze sculpture.

Rather than make a profile photograph of the subject in a standing or sitting pose, he has the subject lie down and then raise his head at a 90-degree angle to the torso, adding tension to the photograph. There are many other examples where Ritts uses this pose.

Ritts believed that natural elements and subjects stripped to the barest form were the most difficult to capture, but he always seemed to do so in a sculptural way, defining the body’s form and detailing lines and curves beautifully.

Other Herb Ritts Resources

Recommended Herb Ritts Books

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• Herb Ritts: L.A. Style, Getty Publications, 2012
• The Golden Hour: A Photographer’s Work and His World, Rizzoli Publishing, 2010

Herb Ritts Videos

Making of the Pirelli Calendar (1999)

The Making of Michael Jackson’s In the Closet (1992)

Here’s a full list of Music Videos directed by Ritts. You can watch all the videos on our Herb Ritts YouTube Playlist (opens in new window)

1989 – Cherish, Madonna
1991 – Wicked Game, Chris Isaak
1991 – Love Will Never Do (Without You), Janet Jackson
1992 – In the Closet, Michael Jackson
1994 – Please Come Home for Christmas, Bon Jovi
1996 – Let it Flow, Toni Braxton
1998 – My All, Mariah Carey
1999 – Baby Did a Bad Thing, Chris Isaak
2000 – Telling Stories, Tracy Chapman
2001 – Gone, N’Sync
2001 – Don’t Let Me Be The Last To Know, Britney Spears
2001 – Ain’t It Funny, Jennifer Lopez
2002 – Underneath Your Clothes, Shakira

More Herb Ritts Photos

You can view more of Herb Ritts’s photos by visiting the Herb Ritts Foundation

Herb Ritts’s Contact Sheets

Recommended Reading

Herb Ritts Interview, by François Quintin, 1999
Interview with Hermann Vaske (PDF, Google Drive)

Fact Check

We strive to be accurate and fair with all our photographer profiles. If you see something that doesn’t look right, then contact us and we’ll update the post.

If there is anything else you would like to add about Herb Ritts’s work, then send us an email: hello(at)photogpedia.com

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Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Sources

Herb Ritts: Official Site of Herb Ritts Foundation
Catalogue: Herb Ritts, ArtNet

Ritts Profile, American Photo, Jan-Feb 1999
Herb Ritts Interview, by François Quintin, 1999
Herb Ritts Obituaries, The Independent, 2002
The Photograph That Kicked Herb Ritts’s Career into High Gere, The Getty, 2011
Herb Ritts, In Retrospect, Vanity Fair, 2012
L.A. Style at the Getty Museum, Telegraph, 2012
Herb Ritts Exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Shane Hurlburt, 2012
The glamorous eye of Herb Ritts, CBS News, 2012
Getty Museum Collection: Herb Ritts, 2012
Herb Ritts: Beauty and Celebrity, The Oklahoman, 2013
10 Iconic Photos of Herb Ritts, Harper’s Bazaar, 2015
ASC Close Up: Shane Hurlburt, American Society of Cinematographers, 2016

Herb Ritts: L.A. Style, Getty Publications, 2012
The Golden Hour: A Photographer’s Work and His World, Rizzoli Publishing, 2010

First Person with Maria Shriver, 1991
Herb Ritts on The Arsenio Hall Show, 1992
The Today Show with Bryant Gumbel, 1996
Herb Ritts at the MFA Boston, October 1996
The Making of the Pirelli Calendar, 1999
Herb Ritts: L.A. Style Short Film Documentary, 2012

The post Herb Ritts: Photographing the Famous and Fashionable appeared first on Photogpedia.

A naked, slightly startled Julie Christie. A groovy looking Jimi Hendrix. A wide-eyed Twiggy, posing against a Union Jack Flag…

All the work of Terence Donovan. 

Along with David Bailey and Brian Duffy, Donovan revolutionized the world of fashion photography in the ‘60s. The trio dubbed the “Black Trinity” by photographer Norman Parkinson, captured “Swinging London” and were three of the most important photographers of their generation.

Donovan also directed commercials (over 3000 of them), documentaries, and music videos including Robert Palmer’s, Addicted to Love.

With a career spanning four-decades, Donovan produced some of the most famous images in British fashion history for magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Nova, and Harper’s Bazaar. 

Related: 27 Terence Donovan Quotes on Photography and Hard Work

He was a photographer’s photographer. All his work was so powerful I could not choose one outstanding image. It was all brilliant. He was an Orson Welles of photography, in every way, in stature, and in his presence.

David Bailey

Terence Donovan Biography

Nationality: English
Genre: Fashion, Advertising, Portraits, Nudes
Born: 14 September 1936
Died: 22 November 1996 (60 Years Old)

Early Life

Terence Donovan was born in Stepney, East London in 1936. The only child of a working-class family, his father was a lorry driver, his mother a department store supervisor.

He left school at 11 and started a part-time apprenticeship in lithography, studying blockmaking at Fleet Street’s London School of Engraving and Lithography.

Born in the East End, I spent most of the war in the cab of a large lorry traveling around England with my father. I went to about 10 different schools because we were moving around so much, and then I decided to become a chef. I tried very hard to get into the School of Cookery in Vincent Square. But that didn’t work because I was too young. So as the only respectable job other than lorry driving or professional soldiering in our family was that of Uncle Joe, who was a lithographer, I decided to become a lithographer.

Terence Donovan

Enter Photography

For a while, it looked as though lithography would be his chosen career. That all changed though when he discovered photography after joining the photographic department of a Fleet Street blockmaker when he was 15.

The excitement of creating pictures, developing the film, and watching an image emerge from a blank sheet of paper, began to possess him. Not long after he changed careers.

He first worked as a photographic assistant to Hugh White and Michael Williams at Fleet Illustrated, where he stayed until he was called up for national service.

Two years later, after completing his service, he joined the John French Studio, one of the leading fashion photography studios of the time.

Donovan was keen to learn and wasn’t afraid of hard work, assisting everyone from Michael Williams to John Adrian and, finally, the legendary John French.

Professional Photography

In 1959, after working a year as an apprentice for John French, Donovan set up his own studio in Yeoman’s Row at the age of 22. His time with John French had been a great learning experience, but the ambitious young photographer was determined to go out on his own.

Business was slow to start with – his first commission was a still life of a sponge cake – but his daybook was soon filled with jobs from the likes of Vidal Sassoon, Sketch magazine and the Sunday Times.

Town Magazine

One of his first contracts was with Town magazine. For a story on men’s suits published in 1960, Donovan used the gasworks and industrial settings of the East End of London where he grew up.

It is not so long ago that the only way you photographed a man was on a shooting stick in Regents Park. So I thought, right, we’ll get on to this. We’ll go to the gas works.

Terence Donovan

Donovan experimented with his style and pushed what was deemed acceptable by magazines, often using 35mm film cameras and a long lens for his location shoots. This started a new trend for photoshoots in gritty urban environments.

It was working for Town, that really got me started and got me a name.

Terence Donovan

His pictures were edgy for the time: they were grainy, with dark shadows and high contrast and full of character. He juxtaposed the soft with the hard, the luxurious with the everyday.

It was a strategy in picture-making that he would adopt time and time again throughout his career.

His gritty and noir style was more reportage than fashion photography, and unlike anything that had been seen before.

The Spy Series

His photos looked like film stills rather than fashion photographs. So much so that the producers for James Bond, auditioned one of his male models for the role of Bond before casting Sean Connery. His series of spy photos pre-dated Bond by a year.

With his reputation on the rise, Donovan attracted new clients from the advertising world as well as the leading fashion and lifestyle magazines of the day such as Vogue, Elle, Queen, and Marie Claire.

However, it was until the mid-’60s when Donovan came to prominence.

The Swinging London

In 1973, Cecil Beaton dubbed Donovan, David Bailey, and Brian Duffy as “The Terrible Three”. Their photos were raw and edgy, the opposite of the formal, static, and set up photos in magazines of the time.

Donovan along with Bailey and Duffy, captured, and in many ways helped create, the Swinging London of the 1960s: a culture of celebrity chic and high fashion. Their photos started a revolution in photographic thinking.

But the enduring legend of the Swinging London photographer wasn’t created on the pages of the fashion magazine, but instead at the movie theatre with the film, Blow Up – a mystery story with a London fashion photographer as the central character.

After the release of the film in 1966, every fashion shoot would be seen as a reason to party: free drugs, free sex, and free-thinking.

The trio socialized with actors, musicians, and royalty, and found themselves elevated to celebrity status. Together, they were the first real celebrity photographers, becoming just as famous as the people they photographed.

While photographically Donovan was in sync with Bailey and Duffy, his lifestyle was a different story. Donovan didn’t smoke, was tea-total, and was a zen Buddhist.

Advertising and Motion

In the early Seventies, Donovan – now a half-forgotten sixties hero – decided to focus on advertising work and branch out into motion.

His foray into feature filmmaking was unsuccessful. In 1972, he made Yellow Dog, a movie about a Japanese spy in London.

Donovan also directed plays, documentaries, and music promotional videos over the decade.

The money was great, but his love was photography.

Prominent figures such as Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana continued to seek him out in the hope that his photographic alchemy would still work wonders, it always did.

One of his great talents was he could talk anybody into doing anything. There’s the famous story of Princess Diana. She was nervous and he said, ‘Don’t be nervous,’ and he took a £20 note out of his wallet, waved it in the air and said, ‘Smile at mother-in-law. She did. He got the picture. He’d get many more.

David Hillman

By the early ’80s, most of Donovan’s time was spent making television commercials and shooting campaigns for clients. Occasionally he did fashion editorials for magazines and newspapers, but it was clear that fashion had taken a backseat to the lucrative world of advertising.

A lot of his friends felt that Donovan compromised his artistic integrity with so much commercial work. He always insisted he was a craftsman, not an artist.

Music Videos

For much of the ’80s and into the ’90s, Donovan continued to move away from editorial photography, having found his talent for directing commercials and music videos in a time when budgets were almost limitless.

Donovan’s most memorable music video was for Robert Palmer’s song Addicted to Love (1986) which earned him a nomination as one of Vanity Fair magazine’s “People of the Decade” in 1989.

Over 30 years later the iconic video remains relevant.

In the video, Palmer fronts a band flanked by five stunning models on guitars. With over 64m views on YouTube (as of the writing of this article), it has been parodied by Weird Al Yankovich and had the reverse treatment from Shania Twain.

When I did my 900th interview about that Robert Palmer video Addicted to Love someone asked me where I got the idea from and I said, ‘I did something rather odd… I thought of it!’ It seems to be a rather old-fashioned thing to do.

Terence Donovan

Later Career

By the mid-90s, Donovan was a senior figure in British photography, a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and a photographer to the Royal family.

Though Donovan had many interests, his passion for photography remained constant throughout his forty-year professional career.

I was always much more interested in doing the thing than being the thing. I was much more interested in photography than being a photographer.

Terence Donovan

It didn’t matter how busy his schedule was, Donovan always found time to meet amateurs at local camera clubs.

In 1974, he spoke to a group of photography students at Manchester Polytechnic. He told the students never to work for an employer but instead “find something you want to do and get someone to pay you to do it.”

In 1963, he told Jean Shrimpton, “photography fascinates me. Instant fascination every time. When the fascination leaves me, I’ll give it up.”

As it never did, neither did he. He continued to photograph at his Chelsea studio until his death in 1996.

He was one of the great British photographers and on a par with Irving Penn in America.

Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon)

Judo and Buddhism

Outside of photography, Donovan was a keen Judoka and a Zen Buddhist. He became fascinated with everything Japanese after watching Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai for the first time as a teenager.

After work, Donovan would head to Budokwai his Judo club in London, eventually rising to the rank of black belt. In 1985, he combined his two passions and photographed the images and co-wrote the instructional book, Fighting Judo with former World Judo Gold medallist Katsuhiko.

In Judo there is no shield, no Armani overcoat to hide behind. There is immediate physical contact. You learn about yourself when you are faced with an enormous ginger-haired bloke with every other tooth missing, salivating at the thought of pushing you straight through the mat.

Terence Donovan

Legacy and Death

Donovan’s suicide in 1996 came as a surprise to everyone. His death – the result of depression – was attributed to the side effects of the steroids he was prescribed to treat a skin condition.

Donovan married twice. His first marriage to Janet Cohen was short-lived, his second marriage to Diana Dare would last until his death. Donovan had three children: Dan Donovan (musician), Daisy Donovan (television presenter), and Terry Donovan (co-founder of Rockstar Games).

After 40 years of working as a photographer, he left behind an archive of around a million images.

He published only three books in his lifetime: Women Throooo the Eyes of Smudger Terence Donovan (1964); a book of erotic nudes, Glances (1983), and Katsuhiko Kashiwazaki’s Fighting Judo (1985).

Terence Donovan photographed the 1987 Pirelli calendar. The ground-breaking calendar featured only black models, which included a then 16-year-old Naomi Campbell at the start of her career.

Donovan joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1963, gaining his Associate in 1963 followed by a Fellowship in 1968.

Shortly before his death, he was appointed a Visiting Professor at Central St Martins School of Art.

His photos of Diana, Princess of Wales, are included in the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

What Camera Did Terrence Donovan Use?

Donovan used many brands of cameras over his lifetime, often experimenting with different cameras and lenses.

From the early ’70s, he favored the Pentax 6×7 camera but still used 35mm cameras. In terms of lens focal length, Donovan used everything from a wide-angle lens to zooms to telephoto lenses.

For portrait commissions, he mainly used the Pentax 67 165mm f2.8 and Pentax 67 105mm/2.4 (these lenses are the equivalent of around 85mm and 50mm in 35mm format).

Watching videos of Donovan, I’ve seen him use also use an Olympus OM4TI, Nikon F, and Hasselblad. It is also reported that he used Pentax (K1000, MZ-5) and Canon EOS 1 cameras.

Donovan used medium format and 35mm film for his work. Early in his career he also used large format. He used Kodak films for both his black and white (Tri-X Pan and Plus-X) and colorwork (Ektachrome).

Donovan always considered himself a craftsman and would learn everything possible about cameras systems. While most photographers would hand their film over to the lab and printers, Donovan continued to print his photos himself and loved the process of working in the darkroom.

Other Resources

Recommended Terence Donovan Books

Disclaimer: Photogpedia is an Amazon Associate and earns from qualifying purchases.

• Terence Donovan: The Photographs (Little Brown, 2000)
• Portraits (Damiani, 2016)
• Terence Donovan Fashion (Art/Books, 2012)

Recommended Terence Donovan Videos

Afternoon Plus Interview, Thames TV, 1983

Terence Donovan – Speed of Light

Robert Palmer – Addicted to Love (1985)

Terence Donovan Photos

You can view more Terence Donovan Photos here and here

Further Reading

The Terence Donovan Archive
Speed of Light Exhibition Preview, Vogue
Terence Donovan, The Man Who Shot the Sixties, Herald Scotland
How Judo passion engulfed ‘the man who shot the Sixties’, CNN

Fact Check

With each Photographer profile post, we strive to be accurate and fair. If you see something that doesn’t look right, then contact us and we’ll update the post.

If anything is missing from the article or you would like to add something about Terence Donovan’s work and life that will benefit readers then send us an email: hello(at)photogpedia.com

Support Photogpedia

If you’ve enjoyed the article or you’ve found it useful then we would be grateful if you could link back to us or share online through twitter or any other social media channel.

The website was put together so we can all learn from the masters that come before us. The more links we have to us, the easier it will be for others to find the website.

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Sources

Obituary: Terence Donovan, The Independent, 1996
Stars mourn `Orson Welles of photography’, The Independent, November 1996
The Man Who Shot a Thousand Stars, The Telegraph, July 2012
Terence Donovan: the man who shot the sixties, Herald Scotland, November 2012
Addicted to Love: fashion’s favourite video for 30 years, The Guardian, 2016
Terence Donovan: Speed Of Light Preview, Vogue, 2016
How Judo passion engulfed ‘the man who shot the Sixties, CNN, 2017
Terence Donovan Archive

Terence Donovan: The Photographs, Little Brown, 2000
Portraits: Terence Donovan, Damiani, 2016

Afternoon Plus Interview, Thames TV, 1983
On Camera: Photographers at the BBC, 2018
The Real Blow Up: Fashion, Fame, and Photography in the ’60s, BBC, 2002

The post Terence Donovan: The Man Who Shot the Sixties appeared first on Photogpedia.