Cognitive Bow Tie
CASE STUDY #20
CAMERA:
Hasselblad 503c
LENS: FILM:
EXPOSURE: LIGHTING:
120mm macro
120 color infrared film rated at ISO 200 f/8 at 1/125 second
1200ws Profoto pack and one head with a medium softbox OTHER:
yellow (Kodak #12) filter
Assignment
about his personal life—when he first started wearing
Brown Alumni Magazine (Brown University) was
one, when he met his wife, etc. I believe the bow tie
doing a special issue on the top one-hundred gradu-
broke the ice; I wasn’t sure how he’d react to the idea
ates. They assigned me to photograph Aaron T. Beck,
of sitting on an old wooden chair in front of a hedge,
the father of cognitive therapy.
but he said it was “interesting.” You never know what line of conversation will loosen up your subject. Tak-
Visual Objective
ing notice of the small details about your subject
When I arrived at Dr. Beck’s home, I noticed this
shows that you are paying attention.
great, tall, green hedge next to his home. I thought that using it as a backdrop for him sitting in a chair
Tips
would create a surreal effect.
Although the magazine used the image I shot with normal film I have always felt the color infrared image
Posing
was much stronger. If you are interested in learning
To emphasize the unnatural setting, I used a tradi-
how to use it, check out my book The Art of Color In-
tional corporate pose, having my subject place his
frared Photography, also from Amherst Media.
elbow on the arm of a chair and interweave his fingers. The Story
This was a fun assignment for me since I was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania at the time and Dr. Beck was an eminent scholar there. Alumni publications don’t pay very well, so I recruited my wife Kate (a Penn alumna) to assist me. I didn’t know much about cognitive therapy and realized it would be foolish of me to pretend I did since I was photographing the father of the discipline. In my research on Dr.
medium softbox
Beck, though, I did notice he always liked to wear a bow tie. So that’s how I started the conversation. He laughed when I asked him about it and started to tell LIGHTING CASE STUDIES
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