My first photographic jolt occured in grade twelve.

My roommate brought home a book by legendary Canadian portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh called Portraits of Greatness.  Even if you don’t recognize his name, chances are that you’ve seen his famous portraits of Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Audrey Hepburn, Carl Yung, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dwight Eisenhower, Andy Warhol, Ernest Hemingway and so many others.  Almost anybody who was anyone during Karsh’s working years (he died in 2002) was photographed by Karsh.  See http://www.karsh.org for his official website.

Back to my eighteen year-old self.  After class I found a book sitting on a counter in our room.  With time to kill, I started flipping through page after page of masterful black and white portraiture.  That was the first time that I was moved by photography.  For the first time I realized that the combination of ink and paper in two-dimensional book form transcended those simple elements.  The sum of those elements amounted to something beyond three dimensions.  Present in those pages were emotion and humanity and spirit and personality and beauty and timelessness.

That was a watershed moment for me.

Fast forward many years and I’ve recently found myself focused on the art of headshot photography and particularly intrigued by what I call emotionless portraits.  For these portraits I ask subjects to give me as blank, void and emotionless of expressions as possible.

Why?

I want to reduce if not eliminate the clutter of expression that often becomes automatic when we’re in front of a camera.  My goal is to capture a sense of purity in the structure and details and geometry and personality that remains.

Yesterday I attended a gathering of musicians and fans of Edmonton’s Haven Social Club.  With the encouragement of the organizers, I set up a single strobe in a small bedroom and one-by-one shot both emotionless and other portraits of some of the people there.  Below are a few of the emotionless portraits.

For some of the many other portraits — including laughing shots that seem inevitable after holding an expressionless pose — see the second part of this post at http://www.leroyschulz.com/2014/news/headshots-from-a-gathering/.  (Note that the photos are large and the page will take time to load.)

To those of you who good naturedly allowed a stranger to shoot your portrait, thank you.

If you or someone you know needs headshot photography, consider commissioning me for a session.  For details see http://www.leroyschulz.com/2014/portraits/headshots/.

May your life be full of emotion but your portraits be emotionless.  Enjoy!