Article on Emilio Parrado, Associate Professor of Sociology at Penn

Portrait photography is both an art and a science. Producing an exciting portrait involves both the art of seeing, plus interacting with the subject, as well as the science of employing lenses, lighting and technique.

In that spirit I have worked with the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) at University of Pennsylvania for several years. Twice a year they publish a magazine that features articles about faculty research and activities.

I worked with the writer and art director to create a photograph that would work for a two page layout and illustrate an article about Prof. Emilio Parrado’s research on the lives of Hispanic immigrants. As a visual symbol of a border, we used a razor wire topped wall near the university as a background. A low camera angle, strong off-camera lighting, digital adjustments to tone and color help establish the unsettling mood of this image.

Here are several other environmental portraits that I have shot for Arts and Sciences.

Josephine Park, Associate Professor of English & Asian American Studies

Josephine Park’s teaching and research focus on questions of representing Asian American experience. As one of the scenarios, I opted for an out of focus neutral outdoor background.

Victor Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature

Victor Mair helped organize a large exhibition entitled, Secrets of the Silk Road, at the University Museum, as well as writing the exhibition catalog. Incorporating Asian art from the Museum into the background helps illustrate his involvement with Asian culture.

Robert Ghrist, Andrea Mitchell Penn Integrating Knowledge Professor (in Mathematics and Engineering)

The engineering building, Skirkanich Hall provides a spatially complex background for Robert Ghrist who teaches about multi-dimensional spaces beyond three dimensions.

Devesh Kapur, Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India

The historic arched spaces of the Fisher Fine Arts Library form a background for Devesh Kapur, Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India.

Carolyn Abbate, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Music

The fleeting reflections inside a curved stairwell at Irvine Auditorium helps create a simple but abstract background for this portrait of Carolyn Abbate.

Brent Helliker, Assistant Professor of Biology

Having Brent Helliker sit amongst plants re-inforces his interest in plant biology.

Antonio Merlo, Lawrence R. Klein Professor and Chair of Economics, and Penn Water Polo Coach

This playful animated portrait of Penn’s Water Polo Coach, Antonio Merlo, evolved from trying out several ideas by the pool.

Connecting

The Suburban West Realtors Association recently launched a campaign to attract new members and remind their more than 5,000 current members of all of the benefits they gain from the association. The association and their graphic designer envisioned a series of ads. Each would highlight one of the many benefits of membership.

Education

Their campaign is modeled after a similar one that was very successful for a realtors association in a different region, so the concept for each of the scenes to be photographed was already fully developed. Our challenge was to find distinct locations at the association headquarters and in the surrounding community that were different, interesting, and descriptive enough to successfully illustrate each of the ads.

Organization

Since the ads work as testimonials, actual members of Suburban West Realtors were photographed instead of paid models.

Resource

As always, when working with real people and not models, we make a specific effort to make everyone feel at ease in front of the camera, and give plenty of direction so that their poses have a feeling of purpose.

One Voice/Advocacy

Even with the minimal choice of locations available, through lighting and educated camera choices, we were able to deliver five images that successfully illustrate each of the ads and do not feel repetitious.

Paul Stankard examines one of his creations.

Paul Stankard is one of the preeminent American glass paperweight artists. With fire and a patient hand, he breathes life into detailed botanical and ethereal forms that are eventually encapsulated inside crystal.

We were fortunate to visit him at his home and studio to shoot images for a feature story in American Style magazine.

Paul delicately adds fine detail to a glass leaf.

During the shoot Paul, his daughter Katherine, and master assistant David Groeber demonstrated aspects of the glass-working process. Glass is very sensitive to timing and temperature. Greg documented the action while staying clear of flames and annealing ovens.

Paul and master assistant Dave Grober encapsulating a botanical in clear glass.

Throughout the day Greg shot several different environmental portraits of Paul, so that the editor at American Style would have options in laying out the story. Paul’s beautiful home and studio provided many opportunities for photographs.

Paul in his home, which is on the same property as his studio.

There is currently a retrospective celebrating Paul’s fifty years of work showing at the Wheaton Arts center in Millville, NJ. The show runs until May 8, 2011.

Two of Paul’s finished glass botanicals that are in his own collection.

The web site Jezebel has an article about a cosmetic ad that exclaims that it is the first unretouched make up ad. We are so used to every advertising photo being photoshopped that to stand out an ad has to tout its lack of retouching. Note the model’s imperfect arm contrasted with her professionally made up face.

If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, “I hate having my picture taken,” I could take an extra week’s vacation each year. As a portrait photographer I strive to calm subjects’ anxieties. Nervousness about having one’s photograph taken is not a new worry.

I was paging through a book of Ogden Nash poems recently and ran across this poem written in the 1930s.

Waiting for the Birdie
by Ogden Nash

Some hate broccoli, some hate bacon,
I hate having my picture taken.
How can your family claim to love you
And then demand a picture of you?
The electric chair is a comfortless chair,
But I know an equally comfortless pair;
One is the dentist’s, my good sirs,
And the other is the photographer’s.
Oh, the fly in all domestic ointments
Is affectionate people who make appointments
To have your teeth filled left and right.
Or you face reproduced in black and white.
You open the door and you enter the studio,
And you feel less cheerio than nudio.
The hard light shines like seventy suns,
And you know your features are foolish ones.
The photographer says, Natural, please,
And you cross your knees and uncross your knees.
Like a duke in a high society chronicle
The camera glares at you through its monocle
And you feel ashamed of your best attire,
Your nose itches, your palms perspire,
Your muscles stiffen, and all the while
You smile and smile and smile and smile.
It’s over; you weakly grope for the door;
It’s not; the photographer wants one more.
And if this experience you survive,
Wait, just wait till the proofs arrive.
You look like a drawing by Thurber or Bab,
Or a gangster stretched on a marble slab.
And all your dear ones, including your wife,
Say There he is, that’s him to the life!
Some hate broccoli, some hate bacon,
But I hate having my picture taken.

Penn students observe birds at Morris Arboretum

For a location photographer it is always exciting when assignments take you to unusual places. Making environmental portraits inside a birdcage the size of a tennis court was a unique experience.

University of Pennsylvania animal behaviorist Dr. David White leads a course called Research Experience in Animal Behavior. He supervises students as they do hands-on research.

In the photo above, Greg posed the students to show them engaged in their research.

Dr. White speaks with students at the aviary in Morris Arboretum

In a past issue of the Penn Arts & Sciences magazine the publication ran an article focused on one of Dr. White’s student groups who observed the behavior of cowbirds. Greg was asked to visit the research group and their professor at their aviary in the Morris Arboretum just outside of Philadelphia.

Cowbirds in Dr. White's aviary at Morris Arboretum

The location for these environmental portraits of Dr. White and his students gives the photos a rich sense of place.

Dr. White and research students in the aviary at Morris Arboretum

Leslie Neilsen speaking at Penn Law School about Clarence Darrow in 1999 © Greg Benson

Actor Leslie Nielsen died at age 84, on November 28, 2010,  of complications from pneumonia. He was a late bloomer. His comedic roles in the movies, Airplane and the Naked Gun series gave him fame and fortune in his later years.

In 1999, I had an opportunity to photograph him when he spoke at the Penn Law School. Nielsen had a serious side and used his Hollywood earnings to present a one man show on the early twentieth century lawyer, Clarence Darrow. Darrow is famous for defending a teacher on trial for teaching evolution in the 1920s Scopes Monkey trial in Tennessee. Darrow was also against the death penalty and defended many people in capital cases including Leopold and Loeb, wealthy Chicago teenagers who kidnapped and killed a younger boy.

Retrieving the 1999 image of Nielsen from my archive is illustrative of how much the technology of image making has changed in eleven years. The original is a color negative that was in a job jacket in my studio attic. Once I found the negative, I scanned it, a process that took me around fifteen minutes. A digital original would have been much quicker to find, view and post.

At the end of the day, technology only matters so much, Nielsen’s deadpan comedic delivery brings laughs or groans, whether on film, DVD or youtube.

Neilsen in spoof of Vanity Fair photo of Demi Moore

First full page print ad for Minwax.

Photograph for full page print for Minwax ad.

Each of the ads would showcase a different piece of custom furniture and a model playing the part of a satisfied DIYer showing off their efforts in their garage/basement/workshop. The furniture, its beautiful grain and finish, would be the hero in the shot and needed to be beautifully lit.

Greg sits for a lighting test at our studio.

Our bucolic location.

Lighting set up in an alternate set at our barn location.

Reviewing images on location.

Second full page print ad for Minwax.

For an annual report assignment we created these photographs of doctors and nurses.

Surgery Team

Nurses on the move.

Doctor with thoracic stent.

Doctor with AV display.

Anesthesiologist