Platon : The Art & Craft of Portraiture

Our first workshop of the season was with Platon. Bright and early Saturday morning, he glided in the door with his witty, charming British personality, two assistants and three interns in tow. A little background on Platon:
- he has photographed an astounding number of famous personalities, many of which can be seen in his book “Platon’s Republic.”- he is one of the few people to have taken a portrait of Vladimir Putin; this photo awarded him the 2008 World Press Photo Contests’s 1st place.
- he shoots for a range of publications including The New York Times Magazine, Time, Esquire, and Rolling Stone.
- he shot this recent portrait of Michelle Obama for the cover of Time.

Looking past this wealth of experience and fame, he was also a really great teacher. The entire weekend revolved around portraiture and the experience between subject and photographer. The class consisted of an incredibly broad range of skill level and experience; one man had been out of photography for quite some time and was ready to jump back in to portraits, another traveled all the way from Puerto Rico just to work with Platon, a few were college students. We began with some exercises that forced us out of our comfort zone and into each other’s personal space. Luckily, it was a great group; everyone was excited to learn and willing to try just about anything (and after the giggles subsided, we learned to be more comfortable with our subjects). This is an image from one of the exercises where our partner had to talk about the most honest, emotional event that has happened in our lives while the photographer had to follow the random aperture orders Platon was yelling out. Paul told me about the happiest and saddest moments:


Another exercise was blind contour line drawings. While this seemed expected from an art student perspective, many of the other students had never done one. The results surprised many of them. Here are the ones Carol did of me:


The rest of the afternoon was spent doing intensive portfolio reviews for 19 people (15 class members and the 4 CPW interns).



The next day we learned about the workflow of Platon and his team as well as their lighting setup. Having never been taught anything about studio lighting, this part was informative with little tips and tricks…one thing Platon mentioned was that he was telling us these things in hopes that we can learn from the mistakes he has made instead of having to make them ourselves. He then gave us a demonstration of how he photographs his subjects.




After the technical tips, we were all given a chance to pose and shoot. To make things worse, we all had to photograph with a land camera. Because few of us had used one before, it gave us the added challenge of thinking about how to use a new camera along with the techniques Platon had taught about making your model feel comfortable. I can easily say that the majority of us were nervous to perform in front of the entire class. It was much more difficult than it looked…Platon, however, was fantastic at making you feel at ease with the challenge.


We each shot 4 images. One of Platon’s interns, Michael, chose to shoot me, so in return I decided to shoot him. Unfortunately, I didn’t put together that it wasn’t full frame viewfinder, so Michael got decapitated in the first three images. The last pose was my favorite and I think it came out best…

We ended the weekend by choosing our favorite images and taking them outside. We then passed them to the person next to us and they ripped it into 4 pieces. After taping it back together we were told to remember that when we get torn apart, we can always put ourselves back together again (awwww…..)