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Douglas Kirkland
The Man Behind the Pictures
Douglas - a
native born Canadian - has spent most of his working
life in New York and Los Angeles. His career started
quickly when he joined "Look Magazine" in his early
twenties, and later "Life" during the golden age of
60’s/70’s photo-journalism. Among his assignments
were essays on Greece, Lebanon and Japan as well as
fashion and celebrity work, photographing Marilyn
Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich among
others.
Through the
years, Douglas Kirkland has worked on the sets of
over one hundred motion pictures. Among them, "Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "2001", "Turning
Point", "Out of Africa", "Titanic" "Moulin Rouge" in
Australia with Nicole Kidman. In 2001, he spent a
week at sea on the "US Carl Vinson" aircraft carrier
with Gene Hackman on "Behind Enemy Lines" and
photographed Angelina Jolie on the set of "Life or
Something Like It". He recently completed the
advertising campaigns for "Down with Love" a comedy
with Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor and Baz
Luhrman’s "La Boheme" the highly successful opera on
Broadway.
Douglas has lectured at The Smithsonian in
Washington D.C., The American Film Institute in Los
Angeles, at Kodak Centers in Hong Kong, Singapore
and Taiwan as well as at Interfoto in Moscow and at
Stanford University’s Publishing Course. In 1995 he
received a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the
American S.O.C. (Society of Operating Cameramen) and
in the autumn of 1997, had a large highly successful
retrospective of his work hung in the Scavi
Scaligeri in Verona Italy. He has been named “Mentor
of the Year” at Fotofusion and “Photographer of the
Year” by the PhotoImaging, Manufacturers and
Distributors Association (PMDA). His latest book “An
Evening with Marilyn Monroe” came out in 2001-2002
with highly successful exhibitions in Milan, Berlin,
London, Los Angeles and Paris. Shows of his work are
traveling in the US and Europe.
He has photographed some of the most famous faces in
entertainment including John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe,
Jack Nicholson, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
To see more of Douglas's work, click here:
Douglas Kirkland
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HP Lab 2003 was held
in Deauville in Northern France and HP Lab 2004 on the island of Kos.
Deauville is most famous
 for its
annual film festival which attracts all the Hollywood stars. Deauville
itself is style personified. Eddie Murphy, making an appearance a few years
ago, said 'it would be a wonderful place to come to on honeymoon'. He's not
wrong. Streets adorned with baskets of flowers, chic boutiques for the style
conscious, the sumptuous Normandy and Royal hotels and of course the sandy
beach - it really is a picture-postcard location.
In 2004, HP
Lab moved on to Kos in the Greek Islands. A
wonderful location and a holiday favourite with
Europeans. White sandy beaches and the taste of
ouzo! Again, the hotel was fabulous and the event a
great success.
The Lab consisted of a number of simultaneous events covering everything
from printers and printer technology to multi-media digital entertainment.
Many themes were used for the individual tracks including The Matrix, James
Bond and even Shrek! The photography session accepted only a limited
number of people - a total of 60 across all sessions during the week -and the demand for places, as expected, was huge.
 The event was managed by
Incredibull Ideas
of London and the models for the Douglas Kirkland Photography
Teach-In were provided by Angels. In both Deauville and Kos our Angels worked with one of the world's best
photographers to illustrate the use of HP digital photography and camera technology
during a week-long HP Lab's session on taking the perfect picture entitled "Portrait of a Lady".
The course run by Douglas
explored the philosophy and technique of portraiture and focused on making
meaningful images of people. The attendees were encouraged to cross the
boundaries of the traditional portrait.
After an hour of orientation
during which Douglas Kirkland showed some of his work and recounted the
circumstances of the sessions, the class moved to a location, working with the Angels' models, using a digital camera. Douglas first demonstrated
basic techniques to achieve successful portraits. He showed how to get the
best out of the subjects, how to look at them with a caring loving eye and
make them feel at ease in front of the camera. Then he helped the members of
the class to start photographing the Angels' models. The class explored ways
to best bring out drama and beauty, using reflectors and scrims and Douglas
shared simple tips to improve the way of photographing and approaching the
subjects.
The afternoon portion of this
class was spent evaluating the work. Douglas demonstrated some basic
PhotoShop® techniques to enhance the portraits and then selected portraits
were printed.
After the class finished,
Douglas was more than happy to make himself available to anyone who had more
questions and were interested in further discussions.
Needless to say, the Angels
models enjoyed the event and the experience enormously! More
importantly, the client and the organisers were extremely happy with the
outcome. Yet another successful event for Angels and yet another very
happy Angels client!
Please note that some
photographs in this section of the Angels web site are
copyright © 2003 Douglas Kirkland or © 2003 Hewlett Packard.
PhotoShop® is a Registered Trade Mark of Adobe, Inc.
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