Transcription
Hey everyone, today I want to talk to you about one of my photography heroes, Yusef Karsh, and specifically how studying Karsh, the man and the artist, can make us better portrait photographers.
Recently, I picked this book up from the library, which is titled “Karsh,” but if you go inside the book, it’s “Karsh: A 50-Year Retrospective.” This is such a wonderful book because it’s an autobiography, so it’s Karsh in his own words talking about his life, his experiences. And the other thing that’s so great about this is that all of the photos have an accompanying blurb where Karsh discusses the person he photographed, and also some of the technical details and some of the things that went on behind the scenes. So you really get an inside look into the man.
So, before we get going on talking about Karsh, one thing I do want to say is I highly recommend that you get books and look at photography books. There’s something very different about looking at an actual print in front of you than staring at a screen. If you’re looking at it on a computer monitor, you just don’t get the same experience. Photography books are very expensive, obviously, because they’re usually oversized, and so much goes into the reproduction of the images. That I would recommend just go to your library and check out some of these awesome books that you can just look at and then bring back when you’re done.
Well, a little background about Karsh: He was born in the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian genocide, and so his family were actually victims of the genocide, and they wound up fleeing their war-torn country. Karsh luckily was able to escape; uh, his parents were able to arrange for him to come to Canada to live with his uncle. And back then, you needed to have a sponsor if you wanted to, um, leave your country and go to the New World. So he was able to go to Canada to live with his uncle, who was a portrait photographer. And right away, his uncle saw a lot of talent in him and decided that he would be best studying with one of the most famous photographers at the time, a man named Garo, who lived in Boston. And he wound up going to Boston for what was supposed to be six months and turned into three years of him studying with Garo, who was his mentor and friend. And there’s a lot of great stories about that time in his life, which I won’t get into here, um, but I highly recommend you, you check out his book and and check out some of the history of Karsh, because it’s it’s really wonderful and fascinating.
There’s so much we can learn by studying the greats in our field, and in this video, I just kind of narrowed it down to five lessons that I believe that Karsh can teach us that really will make us better.
The first lesson we can learn from Karsh is that he had definite goals, and he pursued them with laser precision. After Karsh finished studying with Garo in Boston, he decided, uh, even as a young man, that he wanted to photograph famous faces. And instead of just hoping that these people would find him, he purposely said to himself, “Well, I’m gonna go to where all of the people are, all of the most famous people.” And he wasn’t talking about necessarily just movie stars and things like that; he wanted to photograph, uh, the people of power, politics, and things like that. And he described Ottawa, the capital of Canada, as sort of the crossroads of the world, and that’s why he decided, “Okay, well, now that I’ve learned my craft and and I’m ready to start my own studio, I’m going to put it right in the center of where the action is.” And that’s exactly what he did.
Now, I love this story because it shows not only that Karsh had definite goals early on, but it showed that he believed in himself, too. And I’m a big proponent of writing out goals and making sure that not only I have goals as a photographer, but that I put them on paper, because there’s something about writing them down that that kind of solidifies them in in your psyche. And more importantly than just having the goals, Karsh pursued the goals, and I think this is super important. He didn’t just wait for these people to find him; he decided that, “Well, if I want to photograph famous people or people of note, I’m going to go where they are.” And so he moved to the capital city, opened a little studio there, and this was one of the ways that he was able to connect with these people. It was one of the defining decisions he made that made him uh, who he was. I really believe that this is so important for us as photographers, or if you want to be successful in anything: One of the first things we need to do is make the goals, know what we want to do, and then pursue them. The first thing you want to do is figure out what your goals are. Some of us don’t even know what we want. So once you figure that out, it’s important to follow that. So that’s the first lesson I believe that we can learn very, very well from Karsh: Make your goals, know what you want, and then go out and get them. Don’t just wait for them to arrive on your doorstep; it doesn’t work that way.
The next thing we can learn from Karsh is that he never let his failure define him. Now, there’s a wonderful story in his book where he talks about early on, moving to Ottawa, he became involved with a theater company, and the Governor General’s son was part of the theater troupe, and they became friendly. And this this other young man really liked Karsh and believed in him and arranged to have his parents, who were the Governor General and his wife, the Lord and the Lady—very high-powered people—come and sit for Karsh in his studio. And basically, Karsh totally screwed it up. He was so nervous to have these high-powered people in their full regalia come and sit at his studio that he said he couldn’t even get the camera in focus. He was nervous; he couldn’t; he didn’t really know how to speak to them, and all of that; he totally screwed it up. But more important than that is what he did afterwards. Instead of letting this failure run him down and make him feel like, “Well, I’ll never be any good; I give up; I’m just going to throw in the towel,” he actually had the nerve to ask them to sit for him again, a second time. And he so he really believed in himself, and he didn’t let his failures destroy him. In fact, I would say that failing that first time probably taught him so much more than he would have learned if he had gotten it right the first time. Make sure that your failures don’t define you as a failure, but if your failures define who you become, then they’re well worth it. And one of the things I’ve learned as a photographer and a business owner and all that is sometimes my biggest failures have led to my greatest victories because I’ve learned the most from them. So be like Karsh: Learn from the mistakes, learn from your failure. And the story goes that once the Lord and his wife, the the Lord General or the Governor General came back the second time, then he he got it right; he got a great portrait, and it wound up being published multiple times, and that really helped his career.
The next thing we can learn from Karsh is that he was always prepared. Now, most of us know about his very famous portrait of Churchill. And the story goes that Karsh had set everything up; Churchill didn’t know that there was going to be a portrait photographer. He had just finished a speech; he came into the chambers, and he wasn’t happy to see the photographer there, who was Karsh. He begrudgingly stood where Karsh wanted him, and he would not put down his cigar, though. So Karsh went up to him and politely said, “Please forgive me, sir,” and he pulled the cigar from his mouth and shocked Churchill a little bit, and that’s why he gave him the grimace and then took the photo. This is such a great story, um, and we can learn a lot obviously, right, from there, studying that. But one of the overlooked parts of this story is that Karsh was always prepared. What he did was he got there the night before, set up all his lights, set up his camera; he made sure that the instant Churchill walked into the room and got into position, he knew that the photo would come out great. Now think of it this way: What if Karsh hadn’t set up properly? What if he had kind of just been lax about it? What if he just hoped it would come out good but didn’t really know? That iconic portrait would have never happened. And that was the portrait that really defined Karsh’s career, and it really brought him to legend status after that was published; it was so reproduced, um, so many times; it was such a famous portrait. So the lesson we can learn here is always be prepared. And I know that a lot of times I look at the photographers that I love, and it’s easy to think that, “Oh, they’re just so naturally gifted; they just see things.” But the truth is most of them have worked their butts off to get to the level where it’s almost automatic, and even at that level, they still prepare. There’s really no substitute for good preparation. Take this lesson from Karsh: Make sure you’re prepared when you go and you do your work.
The next thing we can learn from Karsh, which is the reason why I believe his portraits are so iconic, is that he did his homework on his clients. And Karsh says himself that he would study and learn about the person he was supposed to photograph, so that when he went to photograph them, it wasn’t just a stranger to him; it was someone he already knew on some level. Now this is super easy to do nowadays with the internet, and it was a lot harder to do back then, but it shows that he wanted to connect with his clients. This is one of the most important things for us to do as portrait photographers, and this is one of the reasons I believe, probably the key reason why Karsh’s portraits really show the actual person; like you can understand and get a sense of who that person is by looking at their portrait. It’s so much more than just a photo of a person; it really gives you a glimpse into their soul. Definitely do your deep dive, do your due diligence, do your homework on your clients, and make sure that you’re trying to capture their personality and not really your own preconceived goals of what the shoot should be or what they should look like. Sometimes it’s not going to look at all like what you think it should look like by the time you get the results, but it reflects their personality much more.
The next lesson we can learn from Karsh is similar to the last one. So not only did he do a deep dive on his clients, but the other thing that he did, which I find to be so awesome and a key to success as portrait photographers, is once he had his camera and lights and everything set up, he used a shutter release, handheld shutter release, and moved away from the camera so he could interact with his client. And I love this so much because the camera really can be a huge barrier between a person and their true emotions, especially if you’re not used to being in front of the camera. Sometimes we take this for granted as photographers; we forget how imposing it can be to have this giant camera lens pointed in your face and to have to now convey some kind of emotion. It’s almost like being a performer for the client. And moving your head away from the the camera, the way that Karsh would move his head away from the camera and sort of remove the barrier between him and his client and just interact with them is amazing. And this is something that we definitely want to do as photographers. The cool thing is, in 2022, if you’re using a new mirrorless camera, like, for instance, I’m using the Canon R5 in my studio, this is so easy to do now because the camera will do the work for you; it tracks the eye; the focusing is amazing. And I found myself with my portrait clients more and more getting my head out from behind the lens and just interacting with them, and I think it makes a huge difference. This is a wonderful lesson we can learn from Karsh: Stop being so buried into the details. And I think that the other lessons that we’re learning uh, from Karsh about being prepared and about learning about your client, all of this works together because if you’re prepared, if you have your equipment figured out, if you know everything is set perfectly, then you don’t have to worry about having your head buried behind the camera to check on settings and things like that. Interact with your subject; make them feel comfortable; get at their personality.
So I hope you enjoyed this little, um, retrospective into Karsh. I’ve really been enjoying studying Karsh and and and reading about him and looking at his photographs. And there there are quite a few excellent videos on YouTube about Karsh, so definitely check those out. And um, if you’re not feeling inspired right now as a photographer, go and seek some inspiration, whether it’s a book or photographer or just going outside and enjoying nature. Do something to to spark that creativity because it does come in waves. I’ve noticed for me there’s times where I have a wave of intense creativity where I’m just doing so many creative things one after another, and then there’s kind of those plateaus. So what I’ve learned to do is at those times where I’m not creating so much, then I will study other art and other artists to keep my inspiration up for when I get back to that that creative wave.
As usual, if you enjoyed this video, hit the like button, subscribe, share it if you so desire, and I wish you a great day today. Go out, have fun with your camera, take some awesome pictures, and I will see you next time. Bye everyone.