You never use strobe to illuminate your images. Why is that?

I like longer exposures because, in general, my photography is about portraits. I even consider my nudes to be portraits. The eyes are very important in every portrait. I can’t explain technically why the look of the subject is more deep, more touching, more human if the photographer uses a long exposure for the shot, but it is. I learned this from studying early photographs, when the photographers were obliged to use longer exposures. The portraits looked much deeper.

So what types of lighting sources do you use?

I work primarily with HMI lights, Mag-Lite flashlights and window light.

Do you have a favorite?

Window light. For me, it is the basis of everything. As Nadar said many years ago, at the beginning of photography, « Everyone can learn the technique of lighting. What is very difficult, and what you can’t teach is a feeling for the light, a sentiment of the light. »

Lighting is, above all, not a question of technique, but of the feeling. Because, even if you think it is a simple light, it depends on where you put the camera, where you put the subject, what you put behind the subject or beside the subject, the angle of the sun, if there is a cloud in front of the sun. Anybody can use a strobe, anybody can use any light – but to capture the sentiment of the light – that is not so easy.

Has your approach to lighting changed much over the course of your career ?

Yes. In the beginning, my lighting was very stiff, very different from today. I was taking a lot of care with the light. Maybe the relationship between the light and me was young, so I was a little bit scared of the light. But now the relationship is much cooler – we know each other much better and everything is much easier. In the beginning, like many young photographers, I think I wanted to show what I was able to do with the light. I was more narcissistic about it.

Now I am much more humble. I prefer to hide what my light is doing. Now I work more in a way that the subject is dictating the light.

How does this affect the lighting decisions that you make on a daily basis?

I try to be very fresh, very spontaneous and very free when I work. Sometimes, when I arrive at the studio in the morning, the lights are just sitting in a certain way – however my assistant left them – and I will just switch on these lights and take a picture without changing anything. Chance is very important to me.

How do you go about lighting an image ?

When I work in my studio, I always start with the main light. The main light for me is the sun, even if it is a tungsten source or an HMI. I always start with my sun. I set up one light – with its one angle, one shadow, one direction, one intensity, one quality.

Then, around this sun, I can start to maybe put reflections, to put other little lights here and there and there.