Instinct and Beyond

The fall/winter Taschen catalogue arrived yesterday. One of their new offerings, The Godfather Family Album, contains "never-before-seen" photos of the Coppola trilogy shoot. They must have timed this with the recent re-release of the new, digitally mastered DVD of all three films.

Steve Schapiro was a "special" photographer on the sets after he garnered an assignment for an exclusive cover story for Life magazine. He wrote how he shot Pacino during the filming of The Godfather: Part II in the Dominican Republic (apparently standing in for Cuba).

"One morning," Schapiro wrote, "I took Al Pacino around the corner of the balcony to do a portrait against a glass window. With some actors, I've had to jump up and down or even make bird sounds to get the appropriate look. Al, within half a roll, had given me anything I could ever ask for, and we were done."

I hesitate to ask a non-model to model for me because I've had such luck shooting so far. Kaleb was a great introduction into the world of shooting in the studio. He was patient and can hold a pose as instructed. He was my first teacher. He was quick to follow the slightest suggestion or hint from me and had his own beautiful ideas for executing the image. Photography, I think, is a great part of it instinctive feeling. Shooting Kaleb opened my eyes and I was forever hooked.

The three shoots I did with Arron and Scott were my intensive training in shooting models. Lenny was wonderful, too, and had modeled some in his early twenties. His mother was a professional model. I wouldn't mind shooting him again. Not only does he have the looks and physique of a model but also has that instinctive feeling for what looks great in an image. Liking something is the first and essential step to doing anything well.

Schapiro described how he took another photo of Pacino when they were shooting in Palermo. The idea was to shoot the actor in a hallway with light streaming through the window behind him, the light reflected onto the floor. The movie shoot didn't finish until five that day and the beautiful light was gone. He shot Pacino using a strobe to illuminate the actor and did a four-second timed exposure to bring out the dim light from the window spilling onto the floor.

Images begin in our minds. We get a snapshot in our heads about what would look good and get about trying to achieve that effect in the real world. In the course sometimes of doing this we get other, better ideas and we try those, too but inspiration begins as inner vision.

Schapiro thought the cinematographer, Gordon Willis, "seemed to be going for an Oscar. Usually it was almost noon before he would feel his lighting was ready for the first shot of the day." For a scene with Lee Strasberg cutting a cake symbolizing Cuba with Al Pacino, the light just wasn't right for four days! "We remained there, doing the same scene over and over."

Photography, it seems, is much of it instinctive and a visionary element comes first but executing it is work, work, work. Is it naive of me to only realize this now? To get the photographs I want I'll need to work at setting them up not expect as I did when I took snapshots for serendipity to provide them. Luck plays a major role as it does in the rest of our lives but we need to play partners with it, too. We need to take the time to dance.