April 01, 2012 —

The veteran photographer talks lighting, style, and getting his hands on the highly-anticipated Nikon D800.

Fashion and beauty photographer Rob Van Petten’s philosophy is that for an image to be successful, the mood must support the moment. To do that, he says, you must set the stage and create that mood with your lighting.
“Having distinctive lighting is about finding a finer degree of finesse,” he says. “A little bit more contrast here, a little bit deeper there, keep refining, until suddenly you’ve found that magic factor. The dynamics of light and shadow move the reader’s eye exactly where you intended it.”

Van Petten, a veteran shooter who has worked for more than 35 years in the industry, says he wasn’t always at ease when it came to lighting a scene. “Starting out, I was pretty successful right away but it came too young and I wasn’t technically qualified to do the jobs I was landing at the time,” he explains. “I used to stay up all night to figure out the lighting. It was my weak subject.” To remedy this, Van Petten spent almost a year working with a couple of models every Sunday, for full days, on a different lighting schematic for each shoot. The project resulted in a show, as well as a magazine article titled “44 Sundays” and Van Petten says that as he became more preoccupied with lighting, it became a more apparent element in his photographs. “I liked it and I got good at it, and I was getting good feedback.”

One writer at the time even described Van Petten’s lighting as “energizing the pictures more than just illuminating the scene.” Van Petten liked that description. Fast-forward some 20 years later, and the photographer teamed with lighting manufacturer Dynalite, to work closely on new equipment and testing the company’s toys. Van Petten says this made him think even more about ways to energize his images even further through his lighting schemes. “I think that’s really an approach and a philosophy I have maintained throughout my career…to keep the work evolving, to never do it the same way. I do fall into habits, but then I get mad at myself and think, ‘Oh no, this is the same Near Future thing I did last year’ ” he laughs.

Near Future, in fact, refers to one of Van Petten’s most vibrant fashion portfolios to date and was derived, he says, from his youthful interest in chemistry, physics and science fiction. “I always had a real passion for editorial fashion photographers that had just a touch of whimsy and absurd chic in what they were doing,” he says “I wanted to do that in my own way, and so I started shooting that way. I shot a lot of these on film at the time and then made a big drum scan, 100 MB or bigger. And I did a lot of playing around with the saturation of the colors. It makes it more colorful than real-life type of work. I think it was inspired a lot by cartoon images, ‘50s and ‘60s impressions of superheroes. A lot of the female models I pick look a little more modern, but they have a ‘Jane Bond’ quality to them.”

Van Petten continues, “Most photographers who want to be identified as a brand develop a look that is really part of their own fantasy, from their own heart, and it’s part of their own personal style. Mine just happened to be this very light-driven, high tech, very saturated color and style, and that became my identity. I shoot that on my own and much of that gets bought as concept for advertising and fashion work.”

Lately, Van Petten has moved beyond that work to include more beauty and jewelry in his portfolio, as he has spent the last 10 months test-shooting with the most keenly anticipated DSLR in a long time, the Nikon D800. The photographer—who says he’s been shooting with a Nikon since the age of 12 when he borrowed his father’s camera to shoot the family’s travels in Japan and never gave it back—is a sponsored pro for Nikon and spent the last three and a half years shooting with the D3X before getting his hands on a prototype of the D800.

The 36-megapixel D800, says Van Petten, is a camera for someone who wants extraordinary detail and super fine quality. “I used to say that a D3X rivals a medium-format camera. The D800 changes my inclination towards anything bigger. It feels and looks similar to a D700 though a little smaller and lighter, with the addition of full 1080P video, and several other great updates.”

In February of this year, Van Petten introduced the D800 a frenzied crowd at WPPI 2012 in Las Vegas. “I remember coming down in the elevator with the prototype and it was like I was a rock star,” Van Petten laughs. “People were mobbing me from the get-go!

“The D800 really applies in beauty shooting,” he adds. “That’s where there’s has been a challenge for medium-format cameras—in a studio where people expect to have cosmetic details, or close-ups on faces and hair, in the personal care shots—that’s where there is sometimes a question of whether a DSLR is going to be a high enough quality camera, and this camera will definitely satisfy those expectations.”

To prove that, Van Petten showed 157 images he had shot with the camera to the WPPI audience, each one designed to illustrate a specific aspect of the camera. In “Beauty and the Beast,” for example (see opening spread), Van Petten paired a stunning model with a dangerous exotic feline to highlight the sharpness of the animal’s fur (and teeth) and the smoothness of the model’s skin and velvet (of the couch). He used a ring light for a current flashy look.

“Here, we wanted to talk about what a beast this camera is and still apply it to fashion shooting,” Van Petten explains. “The light was intended to be a ring light right from the conception.  I like the flashy glitzy look of ring light and always think of it as part of a stereotypical fashion statement. This one is the Dynalite SR3200, which has a big beauty dish reflector around the flash tube, and is uber-adjustable and well designed to fit any camera. The SR3200 was run off a Dynalite RoadMax MP 800 and an extra 25 feet of extension (to dance around quickly) and a PocketWizard built in. I didn’t use anything else, except an entourage of crew, and animal trainers to keep this guy on his best behavior that close to model Carol Lago, who had him purring by the end of the shot.”

For a face and jewelry close-up, Van Petten showed an image of model Anoushka (shown above) with flawless skin, wild hair and details of rich, colorful vintage jewelry. “This remarkably sharp shot rivals anything I have shot with bigger formats,” he declares. “The detail in the stones and the texture of her skin speaks for itself. I doubt I will be sharpening any images from this camera.”

After shooting several bright high key images with the D800, Van Petten wanted to see how the dynamic range of the D800 would respond at the dark moody end of the histogram, as shown in the image of male model Sedale (on the following page).

“I wanted to keep it under lit, and still maintain the sharpness and texture. Sedale sat on the floor in front of this aluminum/leather chair,” Van Petten says. “The key light was a Dynalite 18-inch beauty dish with an 18-inch grid insert, and a diffuser over the face of the dish. That provides a balance of soft local light for his face but still allows direction and shadows. I also used two or three small cards placed close to the model to shape the light and cast shadows on his arm in the foreground. A second Dynalite 2050 head with a grid spot was placed behind his head. That second light provides shape and texture to his shoulders and drives your eyes down this highlight of the chair arm toward the model. That light is on an opposing axis to the key light (both lights aim at each other) and the background was an 8-foot silver wall that I let fall very dark. [It’s] simple; if you want to create mood and have the shot live longer, light less of it.”

No matter what light or equipment you use, Van Petten, who is currently the photography program consulting director at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University, says that finding a style and good concepts is a continuous process. “You first need to put yourself in a creatively receptive place,” he explains “The secret is knowing your own style—movies you like, pictures in magazines, clothing designs that excite you, music, dance, all the things that appeal to you make the recipe for the stew of your own style. You collect bits of style and morph them together into that identity that becomes your own creative Rorschach test.”

GEAR

Nikon lenses: “I like the 2.8 zooms, 14-24mm Nikkor, 17-35mm Nikkor, 24-70 Nikkor, 70-200mm Nikkor. I regularly use the Nikkor AFS 200mm f/2, and the 105 Micro Nikkor 2.8VR.  I shot some of the D800 images with the Nikkor 24 f/1.4G ED, which is a jewel.”

Lights: “Almost everything I use is Dynalite. I like the new RoadMax series packs and I have a number of older series as well (M500xl and M1000xl). I also use the 18-inch Dynalite beauty dish consistently. I have a new 71-inch RIME light from Dynalite which is a gorgeous, big parabolic, and has crept into my daily workflow. I don’t use softboxes much as I prefer to have more directional sources for dramatic effects. I also use some old tungsten Bardwell & McAlister 2Ks that I bought in Hollywood years ago.”

Miscellaneous: “I use PocketWizard Plus for sync in my studio and sometimes the MultiMax when I am working at bigger studios with more sets going. I use 2 iMac 27-inch computers with 16 gigs RAM—one to tether or WiFi, and one to store and retouch. They are nice, self-contained systems and travel easily.”

Jacqueline Tobin is the executive editor of Rangefinder Magazine. Previously, she was an editor at PDN for 26 years. She is also the author Wedding Photography Unveiled: Inspiration and Insight From 20 Top Photographers, (Amphoto Books, 2009). E-mail her atJacqueline.Tobin@nielsen.com.