Studio portraiture project- brainstorm.

One.
I picked up the latest issue of Esquire last week because Robert Downey, Jr. is the cover story and I love him. I think I probably love him the way men love... maybe Helena Bonham Carter. I don't know. Christina Ricci? There's something very crazy about him- he has the LOOK OF A CRAZY MAN- but he seems like a thinker too, and in every interview I've ever read of him, he just talks and talks and talks, pours forth a river of words like he might actually die if he stops talking. I say all of that because I was fascinated by this photo shoot and would like to think about doing a similar project- http://www.esquire.com/the-side/robert-downey-jr-photos-1209
That project would be:
Take a bunch of random props. Say... a Christmas stocking, a dinner plate, a dictionary and a hammer.
Set up a white backdrop and some lighting.
Have the photo subject improv poses using the different props. Anything they can think of. As many different variations as possible.
Kind of a fun, spontaneous way to capture personality, which I think comes through in that Esquire photoshoot.


Two.
People as fine art, like Dan Winters' portrait photography-
http://www.nerve.com/photo-features/winters/celebrities-as-fine-art/
This would be an interesting project for me because I tend to err on the side of candid photography, preferring the idea of capturing people as they naturally are in the everyday. But there's something to be said for looking at people's faces reverently, as fine art, like they're sculptural pieces. That was part of the humor of Owen Wilson playing a male model in Zoolander, right, but I bet you could take a portrait of him where he would appear unambiguously beautiful- crooked nose being just a part of the detail that makes him beautiful and human in the way that he is.


Three.
I finally caught the Richard Avedon exhibit at the SFMOMA on its closing weekend and was just blown away- photos of people that are simple, stark, black and white, highlighting every possible startling detail of face and eyes. Where Dan Winters' photo subjects have makeup and lighting to heighten beauty in a more traditional way, this documentary stuff seems to go in the opposite direction- heightens freckles, wrinkles, all of the interesting contours of the face.


I want to keep thinking about studio portraiture because this is a realm I've never done before; I don't know anything about studio lighting techniques, I don't own a tripod or a shutter release cable. It'd be a neat challenge to take on. (You with me?)