 Imagine that you are flying across the Atlantic to have a photo shoot with Chalise Theron, one of the most famous people in the world. The shoot has been planned meticulously for weeks. An entire subway station in Brooklyn has been blocked off and booked and paid for. All the outfits have been collected. All you have to do is just go over there, have the shoot and create gorgeous photographs of a world-famous superstar. That's what Vincent Peters thought, but he was about to be thrown a curveball. How's it, how's it, guys? Vincent Peters is one of my favorite photographers. He's an exceptionally famous celebrity slash fashion photographer who creates these gorgeous images, specifically sort of black and white photographs that I find so beautiful because they remind me of a great many things that I absolutely adore in photography. Vincent Peters gets off the plane and he speaks to one of the local people there in New York and they say, you're going to love this, Peter. I'm sure we'll laugh about this later on, but Chalise has said, not interested. She does not want to go to Brooklyn. Now, I believe that Chalise Thrawn lives in a very fancy place down in Manhattan and I'm not sure how far Brooklyn is, but I can't imagine that it's a great distance from Manhattan, but it was a chasm that she was unwilling to cross. Now, rather understandably, Vincent Peters was somewhat distraught by this news and he said, well, look, I've flown all this way. Everything has been booked. What are we supposed to do? Do you know what? I'm just going to go back to Europe. I haven't done with it. Then somebody took him aside and said, look, Vincent, you have been booked, but you are not the only photographer around. If you leave, somebody else will do this and somebody else will get the cover of GQ. He went, okay, fair enough. What can we do? They booked out another studio, obviously a very short notice. They got somebody down. They said, right, tomorrow we're going to have Chalise in the studio. We've got an outfit set for her. It's all good. She turns up and you can sort of see what's coming here. She says, no. She says, I don't like the outfit. I don't like the outfit that you have chosen for the cover. It's not happening. At this point, you can imagine it's probably a bit fractious in that studio. Vincent has an idea. He says, look, I've got a bed sheet from the hotel, and so he gives Chalise this bed sheet. Together, they create, I think, which is one of the most amazing photographs, certainly of a celebrity fairly in the recent memory. It is this sumptuous image that graces the cover of this wonderful book by Vincent Pisa, called The Light Between Us. And that's a wonderful story about how some of the greatest images are made in adversity. Now, obviously, this is first world problem. Dargon, I don't want to be photographed. Just in the next time that everything is kind of falling apart around you, here's a photo shoot. Think about what happened. So why was Vincent Peters hired in the first place to shoot this cover? Well, his images, I feel, as I mentioned, are extremely distinctive. And when I look at them, that photograph of Chalise and all the other images that have caught my attention over the years, one thing leaps out to me specifically is that the lighting is very sculptural. It makes these people look like a cross between a Michelangelo sculpture full of life, a little marble, and something almost otherworldly. Now, obviously, they're supposed to be celebrities that have this kind of feel to them, but there's something about his lighting. And I often thought initially, I thought, you know, this is a softbox. But as we're looking at these images, I want you to think about, is there a period in Hollywood that these photographs specifically remind you of? I'm going to see if you can sort of get it. And I'm going to use the word cinematic, which is a word that is used often with Vincent Peters' photography. That lighting, if it's not a softbox, what is it? And one of the great joys of looking at a photographer's work is to be able to look at it and see the influences and try and deduce how they actually came about creating this image. When you look at the photographs up close and you can see the catch light sides, because I was sort of, when I'm thinking about lighting, I always go to the catch lights first and go, okay, what's that? And often in these portraits, they're very tiny, very small, round catch lights. So it's suggesting to me that it is a unmodified light source. So something that hasn't got softbox on it or things of that nature, that are softening the light. It's a direct source. And then with the fall off, there's really quick fall off. It's possibly a Fresnel lens. So these are lenses in lighting that you have seen, although you may not know the name of them, in those old Hollywood movies, these giant lights that they use. I think they're called Klieg lights. And that kind of weird, angular look to the lens is a Fresnel lens. And that gives you a bit more of a tighter light rather than just a plain old lens where the light would just spill everywhere. Now there's a clue there, a huge clue. These images remind me of that period, 1920s, 30s, 40s, and sort of the 50s-ish of the great Hollywood studio portrait. George Hurrell, this photographer, the kind of, and all these guys, all these lights and things. Vincent Peters is using that kind of lighting, this continuous light, to create these wonderful shapes on the figures. Now that's, I think, a marvellous way of making your images feel a little bit distinctive. But you'll also notice with the black and white that they are rich, gorgeous, sumptuous, lovely. They feel like the tones you could just pick them up and, oh, you could wash your hands with them. But they just have that kind of wonderful textual quality. You almost want to reach out and touch. And I believe that this comes from something that I discovered from reading an article in professional photographer about this very shoot, which is where I drew that story from, is that Vincent Peters photographs with his old Mamia RZ67. So an RZ67 is a big medium format camera, which apparently he's had the same one since he was 17. 17. That's amazing. I love that idea that like a guitarist or a musician or somebody, they have their favorite instruments that are precious to them, that they keep, that there's a symbiosis between them. That I feel, I don't feel that with any of my modern cameras, any of my digital, they're just, they're just a tool. But this RZ must feel like a, like a part of Vincent. And he's, you know, obviously he's photographing on film. And there's a thing with film that I feel when you compare an image against a digital version of it. And there's something intangible in that. I don't know if you've noticed that as well, that the one on film feels organic. And I'm not talking about the grain or the sharpness or any of that kind of stuff. I mean, there's just an indistinguishable kind of vibe about it that I get. And that's what I think, you know, lends all this black and white stuff to have this wonderful, total quality to it. So if you are trying to think about capturing that mood, that feel, and you're struggling for something elusive in your black and whites, then give film a try. See what happens. It's not that expensive to dabble in film photography. And if it's something you haven't experienced before, I think the results, when you get it right, are just something absolutely spectacular. There's a third element to these photographs that is probably overlooked completely. And that is the idea of the theater of photography. The theater of photography is this kind of intangible idea that you want somebody to feel like there's an experience going on. So with this whole setup that feels like a 1930s kind of Hollywood glamour studio portrait thing going on, that these these film stars, these fashion icons can channel themselves into that, that mood. When you look at that photograph of Chalise, she has that classic look. Now obviously she's practiced this over time and these people are actors, but you can't help but wonder if there isn't a way that they are feeling somehow different. They're inspired to act, to feel in a different way. And you can do this with your own photography that you put people into a mindset. You say, look, pretend that you're doing this, or you're this, or that. And you see it so often, I feel, with YouTube photographers who are trying to impress that they will use the latest cameras. They will use very expensive, you know, like Hasselblatt H6Ds, I believe they are now, I'd correct me if I'm wrong. They're great cameras and they're awesome, but they bring a lot more than just their quality to the sessions. You look at that and you go, wow, this person must be successful because they're using a very expensive camera. You can see this in in family portrait photography as well. It's all like smoke and mirrors. It's all like the theatre of photography. And sometimes it can be used for nefarious purposes, like trying to encourage people to spend more money. But other times it can be used for beneficial things, like these images making people feel that they've got a purpose. And I just love that idea in the photography. I just, I think it's marvelous. Look and I feel just, wow. This is, as I said, the light between us. It is a stunning book. And I don't often sort of, you know, recommend books on this channel or anymore. There's because a lot of them are out to print and a lot of them can be quite pricey. And so I've kind of shied away from that somewhat recently. But I would say, if you are interested in celebrity portraiture, if you are interested in that kind of that feel of that film, I was about to say film noir. And that reason I'm saying film noir is because I've got this page open. Look at that. I'll bring those images up. It's, they're just reminiscent of a different time. And they, they have that power to transport you. Now, if you don't want to go down the film route to try and make your black and white photographer like Vincent Peters, then there's a video here that I've created about why your black and white images look dull. Thank you ever so much for watching and I will see you again soon.