Hannah, Drink and Click Portrait – Austin, Texas

Here’s Hannah sitting at a very dark booth at Stay Gold, captured during a Drink and Click in February. If you follow my Drink and Click portraits, you might notice both a style and technique I use with smartphones. I think using this device works on two different levels.

First, it forms sort of a sub-genre of my black and white portraits, with a similar theme. Smartphones are, of course, ubiquitous in our society, and featuring portraits with them are “of our time”. Second, in really dark places, the phone acts as supplemental light. If positioned well, they illuminate the face and adds some sparkle to the eyes.

In a traditional portrait, the weak illumination from a smartphone won’t do much for lighting. But, by using higher ISOs, larger apertures, and slow shutter speeds, like I often do in these portraits, the smartphone is surprisingly bright.