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Professional Advice
© Remy Cortin
Brent Stirton: Canon Ambassador
Brent Stirton is a senior staff photographer for Reportage by Getty Images, New York. He has won five World Press Photo awards and was voted International Photographer of the Year 2008 at the Lucie Awards.
“In my work as a photojournalist I am often looking to make images that have an aspect of solitude. Images of individuals with a strong sense of ‘remove’ – people who are palpably isolated within themselves, some only for a moment, others for a lifetime. There is depth and feeling in isolation, a sharpening of emotional focus when we concentrate on one individual. The history, actions and habits of that individual can be used to further emphasize a sense of solitude. Their environment will ideally build on that.
“These subjects don’t have to be alone. They may be in a riot scene and be the one person who truly emotes what is happening and how people are feeling. It may be someone who is marginalised, someone in a prison cell, or just the un-cool kid at school. It may be someone who through mental illness lives entirely inside their own world. These images seek to expose the viewer to the isolation of that person and use it to highlight the point you are trying to make about that individual and their solitude.
“I constantly employ a number of techniques in this pursuit. The most obvious is to shoot wide open on a fast lens. A lens at f/1.4 focused on an individual in a crowded scene immediately throws that person into isolation, separating them from the crowd. Another approach is to throw controlled light onto a person in a landscape. Depending on your angle and your exposure, you make them larger than life, or smaller. Both options focus attention on the individual, increasing the sense of self-containment. I have always found it makes for a stronger image if they are not looking at the camera. This only increases their sense of solitude.
“Tight, selective focus is another useful tool in images that speak to this theme. You can achieve this with long lenses or short, the point is the exclusion of all that might be distracting from the subject, including their attention on you. A long lens is helpful as you are often able to place yourself outside the subject’s zone of awareness. I may be stating the obvious, but you can achieve a great deal simply by being constantly aware of individuals who are alone in their settings. A person lost in their world, framed correctly with no awareness of a camera, can be interpreted in many different ways. Their isolation reinforces the sense of solitude.
“The lenses I most often use on this theme are the EF35mm f/1.4L USM, the EF50mm f/1.2L USM and EF135mm f/2L USM. All of these offer superb quality and the option to kill the background and really emphasize my subject or have everything in the scene sharply available to set the mood. The EOS 5D Mark II is often my go to camera – it’s smaller and somehow less intimidating for the person I am photographing. I feel more discreet when I am using it.”
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- Related links
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Canon Ambassadors: a profile of Brent Stirton
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Product: EF35mm f/1.4L USM – a photojournalist’s dream
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Product: EF50mm f/1.2L USM – a superfast standard
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Product: EF85mm f/1.2L II USM – ultimate portrait lens
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Product: EF135mm f/2L USM – a candid portrait master
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Interviews: McConnell on Western Sahara
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Interviews: Paolo Pellegrin on ‘Iraqi Diaspora’
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Interviews: Steve Winter on Snow leopards
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Interviews: Lizzie Sadin on ‘Juvenile Suffering’
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News; Photographers for Hope – ‘Eyes on the Street’
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