Who is Steve McCurry. If you don’t know his name, you can be sure to know at the least one image by him. The National Geographic cover ‘Afghan girl’ is one of the most iconic magazine covers ever printed, however Steve McCurry has hundreds, if not thousands of portrait images that are just as hauntingly beautiful. So what is it about his images that is so engaging.

Analysing Steve McCurry’s work

• When you see any portrait of his, the first thing you notice is the eye contact. His subjects look directly into his lens with self assurance. No matter how torn the clothes they wear are, McCurry’s images allows their inner strength, uniqueness and most profoundly, their dignity to shine through.
• The next thing you notice is the lack of distractions. Any detail in the background supports the feel he is trying to convey in the image.

• Colours tend to be quite vibrant but with the skin tones very subtle.

• Shadows are very dark. There is limited detail to distract from the subject.

Why create photographs in a famous photographers style?

That is a stunning question, after all, the last thing you want is for people to say your work looks like …… Insert famous photographer name here …
The thing is that you can learn so much about photography by emulating the styles of the photographers you admire. Spend time analysing their work. Understand their vision. Learn how they edit their work. BUT… Don’t just do this for one photographer. Do it for many and then once you understand their processes you can mix, match and adapt their techniques with your own spin, to create something that is uniquely yours.

Have a look at our ‘How to photograph like‘ series to see other great photographers like Edward Weston, Michael Kenna, Ansel Adams and Arnold Newman.

So here is how to photograph like Steve McCurry

The image choice

I am using a photograph Ally made of a flower seller in the centre of Cape Town, South Africa and will try to “McCurryfy” it as much as possible. In McCurry’s images the subjects are usually looking directly into the lens, usually seriously. In Ally’s image the woman is looking directly into the camera. Like Steve, Ally has an amazing way of making her subjects feel comfortable in front of the lens so this image was an obvious choice as an example of how to photograph like Steve McCurry.

The first thing I will do is to crop the image down to a headshot. Most of Steve McCurry’s images are tight headshot images and although he usually crops to portrait format there are a few landscape (environmental) style in his portfolio of images.

I wanted to subtly keep the flowers in the image as the tell a story about the woman.

“What matters most is that each picture stands on its own, with its own place and feeling” Steve McCurry

The Raw edit

As you can see the original image directly from the camera was totally flat so I set about adding contrast, clarity and vibrancy to the whole image just to get it looking acceptable.

Once the basic edit is done I went to the adjustment brush and lightened and darkened various areas (Dodge and Burn). To add more saturation to the clothing I increased the vibrancy. Once happy with the Raw edit I opened the file into Photoshop.

When looking at how to photograph like Steve McCurry, one of the main things one notices is the lack of inappropriate objects in the background. Now where he would normally change his viewpoint to adjust what he is seeing, we will use Photoshop’s tools to remove unwanted details. The Content-Aware Fill is a perfect tool for this. Just choose Fill from the Edit menu and then Content-Aware from the drop down menu. If you’re already an experienced Photoshop user you can use the Content-Aware Fill option directly from the Edit menu. This will open a new window allowing you to choose what areas you would like the software to use or ignore when doing the fill. It can also put the result on a new layer for you.

Lastly I noticed that all Steve McCurry portraits have one thing in common. There are large reflections in the eyes. When photographing I would normally use a large white reflector to add soft light into the face and it would also create beautiful reflections in the eyes. We couldn’t do that in Cape town as we only had a few minutes and as the area was deserted our guide was getting worried about us flashing expensive equipment around, so Ally had to work very fast.
To get around this problem I created a new layer in Photoshop and used a small paintbrush with white paint to paint in the reflections. After painting them in I reduced the opacity slightly to give a more realistic look.

Finally

Throughout this whole How to photograph like Steve McCurry tutorial I have shown you how to emulate him but don’t just go out and copy a photographer’s style. They are the master of that style and you will never be any better than second best. Get to understand as many photographers’ shooting and editing styles as possible and then take the best feature and mix with your own style to create something that is totally uniquely you. There can never be anyone better at your own style than you.

Click here for special deals on Tim’s Udemy course for Photoshop on the iPad and Affinity Photo v2 on the iPad

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“But Tim, he is an environmental portrait photographer you know. What is he doing in a travel blog and why would you want to show us how to photograph like Arnold Newman?”

Yes, okay, you got us! We know that, but while most travel photography revolves around places and landscapes, one of the interesting things about travel are the wonderful (and occasionally weird people that you meet). While most photographs of people we meet when travelling are quick images, there are times when we have the opportunity to create more in-depth photographs. The more you know about different photographers’ styles, the more you can develop your own unique one. This is why we’d like to show you how to photograph like Arnold Newman.

Using Arnold Newman’s style to photograph the Pianist

One of the things that Ally loves, is talking to people. Put her on a train, plane or crowded bus and by the end of the trip she will have made a new friend and know their life history … well almost. I, on the other hand, in spite of spending my life talking to groups of people as a trainer, am not so sociable. This means that Ally is far more inclined to create the instant and spontaneous photographs of people whereas I prefer to get to know them first and then photograph them in a very set up manner, so photographing in the Arnold Newman way just works for me.

If you haven’t seen the other articles in our “How to photograph like …” series, we have Michael Kenna , Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.

Not in the Arnold Newman style, this Cape Town Flower Seller was photographed in under 5 mins by Ally, but you can see the beautiful rapport she has with her subjects.

So, here is how to Photograph like Arnold Newman

Now if you don’t know Arnold Newman’s work, then have a look here. I am sure you will recognise many of his images. Whilst he photographed a few images in colour, he is primarily known for his black and white work. See our thoughts on what makes a good black and white image.

So how do we do that?

Let’s start by looking at what makes an Arnold Newman photograph unique.

On looking at his environmental portraits, the first thing that struck me was the overriding dark and haunting feel  that many of them have. Not that all his images are dark per-se, but they ooze that moody and serious feel that seems to personify a lot of the great artists and political figures that Newman photographed.

The next thing that I noticed in his portraits was a wonderful 3 dimensional look that they have. No long lens, no wide aperture, so, very little bokeh here then! (Bokeh = out of focus-ness for those of you who are not au-fait with super-photographic trendy terms!)

His lighting is another area that is very Newman. Very deliberate light and shadows that are perfectly controlled to create the correct ambience and contrast for the individual subject.

So where to start

Let’s look at the subject in their environment.

There is more to an environmental portrait than popping the subject in a scene related to their hobby or occupation. Arnold Newman is a master at composition so let’s start by composing our subject in a pleasing way.

Design features to look for:

• lines that lead in to the subject
• symmetry
• repetition
• negative space
• rule of thirds.

For my pianist I saw the repetition of the strings leading to her, the reflection of her in the black piano lid and the lines as my main environment composition elements.

I also really like the large white negative space like silence just waiting to be filled by the piano sound.

Subject on the thirds

Lines pointing to main subject

Triangle holds the subject in the negative space

I removed the distracting wall hanging with the content aware fill tools in Photoshop

Lighting

To photograph like Arnold Newman you need to have control over your lighting.

Adding light

If like us you are traveling light you probably don’t have a full lighting kit with you however there are other ways to get light to do what you want it to do. Reflectors. Anything can be a reflector from a travel fold up circle type to an old white shirt you have in your backpack.  A reflector can be highly reflective and harsh ( think tinfoil) or soft and gentle (old white T-Shirt).

These reflectors can be used in your scene to add light to darker areas and augment details you wish to show the viewer.

Subtracting light

This is the opposite effect. Use a black reflector to remove light from overly bright parts of the image or to darken down areas to get that unmistakable Arnold Newman heavy shadow on face signature look.

We used a reflector to add to the face details and then used burning in at the processing stage to darken down some unwanted details. See our tutorial on dodging and burning.

Although we used softer lighting as we didn’t have a full lighting kit with us, these techniques enabled us to increase the image contrast. However, to truly photograph like Arnold Newman, we should have had more side lighting.

Silver reflector to add harsh light to the subject

Subject’s demeanour

Most of Newman’s subjects are serious to the point of being sombre. These images are not ‘happy snaps for the family album’ and the serious look, directly into the camera, helps us to see into the subject’s soul.

We find asking the subject to think about their art, music or profession usually brings a deep look into their eyes and also helps them to relax and not concentrate on what we are doing with the camera.

You are unique

As with all our ‘How to photograph like….’ series, use your favourite photographers to help you find your own style. Learning from them might mean mimicking their work at first, but after a while you will add your own uniqueness to your images. Arnold Newman’s portraits look the way they do, not because of his technique, but because he had an amazing way of seeing his subjects. Every one of us has a unique way of looking at people and we should embrace that difference and use it to create our own unforgettable images.

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