In my young photographic life, there were only a handful of photographers whose work stood out enough that I actually bothered to remember the name. Ansel Adams was one. Annie Leibovitz was another. For some reason, when she shot John Lennon for the cover of an early issue of Rolling Stone magazine, I saw the name, and it was unusual to me for a couple of reasons. First, you don’t often see the name of a photographer in a newspaper or magazine. Not in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. Photographers were generally anonymous at the time. Two, the name was Annie. Yeah, it was a girl. Which I admired, knowing that the photographic world was mostly dominated by male photographers. When her name popped up in future publications, I took note. And her work was great: simple, evocative, expressive, creative, inspirational.
A Living Legend
Annie Leibovitz was born in the last few months of the Forties, in October of 1949, and has become one of the best-known portrait photographers of the rich and famous, as well as a lot of other work along the way. Just check out the opening paragraph of Annie’s Wikipedia entry:
Anna-Lou Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer best known for her portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken five hours before Lennon's murder, is considered one of Rolling Stone magazine's most famous cover photographs.[1] The Library of Congress declared her a Living Legend, and she is the first woman to have a feature exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery.
Living Legend. Yeah, that’s hard to dispute. If you browse her Instagram account, you’ll see photos of Olympic athletes, book covers of famous folks such as Hilary Clinton, magazine covers, and lots of recognizable names: Billie Eilish, Sienna Miller, Cindy Crawford, Anne Hathaway, Coco Gauff, and a lot of unrecognizable names but stunning, individualistic and creative portraits.
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What I love about portrait photography is the nearly unlimited amount of creativity that a photographer can bring into it. Lighting and mood can be varied. The subject’s body can be used vs. just showing a closeup of a head, although there’s nothing wrong with that, either. Framing can bring in a background that can show the subject in their own work environment, for example, or show them doing something that is out of their comfort zone that would give the image and subject a different look.
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In browsing dozens of Annie’s portraits, whether for a magazine or book cover, whether someone famous or someone generally unknown to the public at large, the photo itself speaks clearly about the subject. Right away, you learn a lot about the person and their surroundings, whether it’s Coco Gauff with her family, home life in Sweden, rural life in Germany, or something else totally unexpected.
When I look at photos and really look, spending time to see how the subjects are posed, I see a lot, and much of it is inspirational in many ways.
Learning Through Seeing
The UK photographer Alex Kilbee, known on YouTube as The Photographic Eye, has assembled a handful of videos that show how Annie Leibovitz approaches photography. They’re moderately short and, as a photographer, extremely helpful in learning how to see with a camera in your hand.
Here are a pair of them.
Photographic Tips from Annie
In watching a few moments of one of these YouTube videos, the first tip that Annie gives is that you must love what and who you’re going to photograph. Create a welcoming space so that the subject feels a home. Talk to people, be interested in them, and learn what they like.
Another tip is don’t overwhelm yourself with a lot of gear. Using less gear forces you to be more creative. As an aside, I find that if I keep using the same gear, I’m very comfortable with it. I know the camera, I know the lenses, and it all feels like home. So yeah, I like that tip a lot.
Let the subject drive the session, not the concept. It makes sense to have a broad outline for the session, such as the lighting or the setting, and then see what direction the subject takes. What signals are they sending, and how are you responding? Little things that come up may make the final photographs much different and better than what you had previously envisioned.
Annie Leibovitz was a photojournalist before she was a portrait photographer; she studied news photographs to try and determine why the photo turned out the way it did. Why was the aperture set that way? Why was it cropped that way and not another way? The more you do this, the more you are open to interpreting what you see in a unique way that reflects how you see the world in front of you.
Lighting
While Annie Leibovitz’s approach to lighting often involves a wide array of strobes and other light sources, she says that using natural light is often the best choice. It’s free, and it can be used at almost any time of the day.
Thank you for writing about Annie Leibovitz. I learned a lot from her photography, especially about composition. Once I sat next to her in a lunch place in the West Village, NYC. I would have loved to talk to her, but didn't want to interrupt her lunch date.☺️