Natural Light B/W Portraits - Recommended Books?

Faces: The Creative Process Behind Gret Portraits, by Jane Bown, publ. 2000.

A superb book covering about 50 years of the author's career as portrait photographer for The Guardian newspaper.

Bown takes all her portraits on Kodak Tri X. (Ignore that as you are shooting digital.) She uses natural or available light except in very bad conditions, when she will use a single 150 watt bulb. She is also good at seizing the moment for the crucial shot, taking her shots naturally without posing the subject, often working alongside an interviewing journalist.

The subjects are all famous for one something, including politicians, pop stars, artists and so on. Mainly British but there are some international figures especially American.

Highly recommended.

Portraits by Duane Michaels... t

Thanks, Richard - I have seen her work. There's one of oh, what's his name, the playwright - Beckett, that's it - that she had like two seconds to take two frames as he's coming out the back door of a theatre. Amazing.

Now off to check out that book and Michaels.

none. i'd recommend shooting more and learning by your own work.

Thanks to Richard Milner for the suggestion of Jane Bown's book -- I checked it out of the library and am finding it very useful.

I'd recommend Disfarmer's and Milton Rogovin's work, along with Avedon. You can get a lot of inspiration from seeing what other people do.

i've always liked these by william gedney

Grant,

Thanks for pointing out William Gedney. I'd seen a couple of his portraits before. There's certainly a heck of a lot more than just his portraits on that site...and some excellent stuff! I particularly like the two auto show photos.

Tete a tete by H-C Bresson and Children by Sebastiao Salgado.

Thanks - I love Salgado's "Workers." Will look into the others tonight.