Karsh type lighting

Can anyone give me any clues to replicating his lighting style? From what I read he used tungsten lights. I'll be using strobes but wondering what to cover the head with, a softbox would be way too diffuse. He also seemed to "underexpose" quite a bit and apparently, when seeing his original prints he has pure blacks. Anyway, any hints would be appreciated.

https://ingeniumcanada.org/channel/...nality-the-karsh-of-ottawa-collection-profile

https://karsh.org/cameras-and-lighting/

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/yousuf-karsh-lighting.38664/

Or do you need it in "for dummies" style?

Ko.Fe. said:

https://ingeniumcanada.org/channel/...nality-the-karsh-of-ottawa-collection-profile

https://karsh.org/cameras-and-lighting/

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/yousuf-karsh-lighting.38664/

Or do you need it in "for dummies" style?

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Yes, please

i worked for someone who did rembrandt lighting its really not too complex ... but you kind of have to know where to place them
hair light ( boom), background, key and fill. she started out with hot lights but converetd to photogenic with barn doors.
her prints had pure ink blacks and didn't underexpose anything it was all tri x and tri x ortho developed in dk50 and retouched with graphite.

cowanw said:

Yes, please

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I wish I could help more on this...
I his book and read about him. From what I have seen, it was main large light source behind and above camera. He also did a lot of work in darkroom to achieve final look. Not only dodge and burn, but different developer on different spots. Format itself was the factor as well.

Karsh (and his assistants) developed many of his negatives by inspection. I don't expect there were many that were under-exposed, but I do expect that he was targeting shadow and midtone and highlight rendition that differed significantly from what might be considered "normal" by most today.

I don't see anything crazy hard to replicate in his work; mainly faces where you can see a hard-ish shadow but the light is soft. A fresnel is great for this, and you can get fresnel attachments for some strobes (pricey though). My go-to for women with good skin is an 11" speedotron reflector with the grid; but I put a disc of white mylar behind the grid. It gets a very fresnel-like look. I'll use that as a main key light, or just to add a half stop fill to other lighting in the setup.

This example was very-pushed E6, so there's a more harsh sense to the tonality, but you can see the way light falls off on the face is similar to some of Karsh' female portraits. Example below is using only that light on digital, with a fresnel lighting the BG with a very slow shutter speed to mush-up the BG.

M Carter said:

I don't see anything crazy hard to replicate in his work; mainly faces where you can see a hard-ish shadow but the light is soft. A fresnel is great for this, and you can get fresnel attachments for some strobes (pricey though). My go-to for women with good skin is an 11" speedotron reflector with the grid; but I put a disc of white mylar behind the grid. It gets a very fresnel-like look. I'll use that as a main key light, or just to add a half stop fill to other lighting in the setup.

This example was very-pushed E6, so there's a more harsh sense to the tonality, but you can see the way light falls off on the face is similar to some of Karsh' female portraits. Example below is using only that light on digital, with a fresnel lighting the BG with a very slow shutter speed to mush-up the BG.

Click to expand...

Um . . .

markbau said:

Can anyone give me any clues to replicating his lighting style? From what I read he used tungsten lights. I'll be using strobes but wondering what to cover the head with, a softbox would be way too diffuse. He also seemed to "underexpose" quite a bit and apparently, when seeing his original prints he has pure blacks. Anyway, any hints would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

markbau said:

Can anyone give me any clues to replicating his lighting style? From what I read he used tungsten lights. I'll be using strobes but wondering what to cover the head with, a softbox would be way too diffuse. He also seemed to "underexpose" quite a bit and apparently, when seeing his original prints he has pure blacks. Anyway, any hints would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

get yourself a copy of the book 'Holywood portraits'. That will reveal a lot.

Encyclopedia of photography: It will help but you have to learn how to render the image using lights in your head first.

Hair, facial features, age of a sitter etc.,

M Carter said:

I don't see anything crazy hard to replicate in his work; mainly faces where you can see a hard-ish shadow but the light is soft. A fresnel is great for this, and you can get fresnel attachments for some strobes (pricey though). My go-to for women with good skin is an 11" speedotron reflector with the grid; but I put a disc of white mylar behind the grid. It gets a very fresnel-like look. I'll use that as a main key light, or just to add a half stop fill to other lighting in the setup.

This example was very-pushed E6, so there's a more harsh sense to the tonality, but you can see the way light falls off on the face is similar to some of Karsh' female portraits. Example below is using only that light on digital, with a fresnel lighting the BG with a very slow shutter speed to mush-up the BG.

Click to expand...

I always wonder when Karsh lighting questions come up. In his published work there seems to be so many lighting scenarios that picking a single typical one seems fruitless. If I had to choose it would be the use of side lighting.
In any case examples of women in his published work ( which was very repetitive) were somewhat in the minority.
So question for M Carter
Were there specific Karsh images you were referencing with your examples?

Ko.Fe. said:

https://ingeniumcanada.org/channel/...nality-the-karsh-of-ottawa-collection-profile

https://karsh.org/cameras-and-lighting/

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/yousuf-karsh-lighting.38664/

Or do you need it in "for dummies" style?

Click to expand...

Great links, very infomative.

RalphLambrecht said:

get yourself a copy of the book 'Holywood portraits'. That will reveal a lot.

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You are very kind, Ralph. I know that Roger Hicks, if he were still alive, would surely have been very grateful to have such a recommendation from the author of a veritable bible in another domain of photography, Way Beyond Monochrome!

christophern said:

You are very kind, Ralph. I know that Roger Hicks, if he were still alive, would surely have been very grateful to have such a recommendation from the author of a veritable bible in another domain of photography, Way Beyond Monochrome!

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Just a note to say how much I valued 'Hollywood Portraits" I study it obsessively.
However the book is not about Karsh. I internet surfed a bit about Karsh's style earlier and quickly came across this site offering AI to achieve Karsh lighting styles.
At the time I said to myself this looks more Hurrell/ Hollywood to me. I think Karsh is quite different to Hurrell. Of course the site offers
as well. Same look more dames.
This got me thinking that, as time passes, intimate knowledge of the nuances of these things gets mushed up and coalesces into a general concept of what that something was; not what it really was. Sort of like how Pictorialism is all about soft focus lenses (not).
A book in the style of Hollywood Portraits but about Karsh Portraits would be nice.

Not Karsh, but the techniques John Alton uses to arrive at classic Hollywood Noir lighting can be pressed into service to determine the specific look you want.

Grab a copy of "Painting with Light" by John Alton. Most likely, it will be a paperback reprint by USC but originals can be stumbled onto for sub-extortionary prices if you are lucky. Alton shows you how to create a "lighting wand" that allows you to experiment with models or manikin heads to obtain your desired lighting ratios and explores things like gobos and nets.

Worth reading even if you don't wind up using any of his techniques.

Note: Wags of the time reviewed the book and called it, "Lighting with Paint"; a nod to the set designers of Hollywood's Film Noir period...

Free copy at: https://archive.org/details/Painting_With_Light

cowanw said:

Just a note to say how much I valued 'Hollywood Portraits" I study it obsessively.
However the book is not about Karsh. I internet surfed a bit about Karsh's style earlier and quickly came across this site offering AI to achieve Karsh lighting styles.

Yousuf Karsh AI Art Style - Classic Portraiture - Yousuf Karsh Stable Diffusion - Yousuf Karsh DeepArt

Discover the artistic style of Yousuf Karsh one of the renowned photographers in our AI Art Style Library. Explore the various techniques and inspirations behind Karsh's captivating photographs. - Yousuf Karsh DeepArt - Yousuf Karsh stable diffusion

www.artvy.ai

At the time I said to myself this looks more Hurrell/ Hollywood to me. I think Karsh is quite different to Hurrell. Of course the site offers

Create AI Art 🔺Generate Unlimited DeepArt

Unlimited DeepArt 🎨 on Artvy AI. Create works of art using neural networks that have been taught to paint in a variety of artistic styles. Incredible AI paintings in seconds.

www.artvy.ai

as well. Same look more dames.
This got me thinking that, as time passes, intimate knowledge of the nuances of these things gets mushed up and coalesces into a general concept of what that something was; not what it really was. Sort of like how Pictorialism is all about soft focus lenses (not).
A book in the style of Hollywood Portraits but about Karsh Portraits would be nice.

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Hi cowanw,

If you want to skip this long post, just scroll down to "Some hints:"

I agree with you on several points .. but first, let me thank you for your roundabout compliment on the "Hollywood Portraits" book which I co-wrote with Roger Hicks. As Roger would say, "It's not perfect but let's hope that it's at least inspirational". I'm glad to see that, twenty-something years after it was first published, it has met that goal.

You are right that the book is not "about Karsh", although —by analysing a couple of the portraits therein which are slightly similar to Karsh's style (and the accompanying technical information!) — you might be able to arrive at a few useful hints. What I stressed in the book is still true now; use the visual and textual information therein as starting points to make your own tests.

Mark Vieira / Hollywood portraits:

By the way — and a quick detour from Karsh to Hurrell, then back to Karsh —the real expert on Hollywood portraits is not me, but my friend, Mark Vieira. Mark, who grew up in the same Northern California town as me, met Hurrell as a young man, in the 1970s, studied with him and, now, actually lives in one of Hurrell's old studios, if my memory is correct (Personally, I only met Hurrell, myself, a couple of times when I worked in a big camera store in Hollywood. He rented Mole Richardsons from me!)

Mark is owner of The Starlight Studio, is a portrait photographer, retoucher of Hollywood portraits and the author of a zillion books on Hurrell and Hollywood's golden era. Mark's books, all while telling stories of the era, are filled with useful technical information on portrait photography using the big, "hot lights".

He's also a source for excellent 8x10" portraits printed from the original in-camera 8x10 negatives taken by Hurrell, himself. Even though portraits by Karsh and Hurrell did not have the same look or objective (and you're right that that AI website mixed them up a bit), having and regularly seeing a real Hurrell portrait would give you a very high quality 'standard' to which you might want to match when doing your own portraits (believe me, I don't work for Mark and he barely answers my emails ... but his work is exemplary!)

Back to Karsh:

I think the only one capable of writing a book like Hollywood Portraits —on "how to get the Karsh look" would have been Karsh, himself.
Why? Don't forget, the information in the Hollywood Portraits book wasn't just "educated guessing", but the result of a directly contacting some of the last living photographers of the era. There was a heck-of-a-lot of research.That's not possible in the case of Karsh!

As it happens, eons ago I did speak with Karsh once on the phone. I don't remember why I called or what he or I said, but I remember feeling a bit like a groupie. More recently, a few years ago, I communicated with his last assistant and the current director of the Karsh estate, Jerry Fielder, to confirm a guess I had about some of Karsh's lighting. I never received a reply —so, maybe that means that my guess was correct!— but I could never write that in a book as "fact" . . . and there is already enough guessing about Karsh out there. Such a book would not sell well.

Anyway, I suspect that Karsh —like a couple of the old photographers I had contacted to get information for the Hollywood Portraits book — would not have shared all his secrets, preferring to be considered the "only one" to have attained that look. Therefore . . .

Some hints:

I've noticed, over the years, that many of those wanting to re-create the "Karsh look", usually try to do so with photographic tools, materials and techniques other than what Karsh used [and this is easily found online, not some "hidden secrets"], and then wonder why their results look different. I saw one guy trying to make "his Karsh" with cobra flash units. Frankly, it was close . . but no cigar.

Speaking of flash, Karsh did use it, and more often than people realize (especially on-location and from about the 1960s, on, I believe).
Even Karsh's studio flash portraits look different from his hot light portraits. So, there's a second hint: There is not one "Karsh look". There are at least three. Choose one.

The last hint; light for objects, not people.

I hope this helps you find your Karsh nirvana!

Cheers,

Christopher

Very nicely put. Especially the recognition that Karsh was able to see in several different lighting styles. At mid 20th century he was one of the top 10 portraitists but the dramatic and retouched style has gone out of style over the years. I am sure it will return in a digital form. But the part that you said Karsh had at least three lighting styles, refreshed my respect for him insofar as he was quite capable of changing things to suit the subject; to show the soul of the subject as he intended.
I wonder if the time frame that Karsh started his colour work was the time he started strobe lighting. I don't suppose his staff were able to work his colour negative in the same fashion as his B&W negatives. I am thinking of his images of Sophia Loren where the B&W and colour were rendered similarly.

M Carter said:

I don't see anything crazy hard to replicate in his work; mainly faces where you can see a hard-ish shadow but the light is soft. A fresnel is great for this, and you can get fresnel attachments for some strobes (pricey though). My go-to for women with good skin is an 11" speedotron reflector with the grid; but I put a disc of white mylar behind the grid. It gets a very fresnel-like look. I'll use that as a main key light, or just to add a half stop fill to other lighting in the setup.

This example was very-pushed E6, so there's a more harsh sense to the tonality, but you can see the way light falls off on the face is similar to some of Karsh' female portraits. Example below is using only that light on digital, with a fresnel lighting the BG with a very slow shutter speed to mush-up the BG.

Click to expand...

I see nothing remotely similar to the qualities of Karsh"s work in these examples.