Kodak Portra 400 – Recreating 90s New York Style

As a teenager growing up in suburban New Zealand during the early 90’s, New York seemed like an urban outpost on a distant planet. I recall a school friend giving me a copy of the Beatie Boys ‘Check Your Head’ album on cassette (yes, we used Walkman’s back then) and my mind being utterly blown by the energy of the music.

The samples, the snatches of street culture, the accents and the attitude hit me like a baton of culture beaming in from somewhere far more exciting than my cold, wet and dreary state housing neighbourhood.

I was already aware of New York’s hip hop culture, mostly via Public Enemy’s Fight the Power; the presence of Māori and Polynesian gangs meant the message of black power resonated loudly from car stereos.

This tantalising street culture – beamed in like a laser from outaspace – always stuck with me, and recently, I decided to recreate that 90’s New York aesthetic in collaboration with my friend Ama (from France/ Benin).

For this shoot, I used Kodak Portra 400 along with two very basic studio lights. We chose a car park in the hipster neighbourhood of Fitzroy, in the inner city of Melbourne where I now live; the graffiti, the rollerskates and the bright popping colours all added to the vibe of the shoot.

In particular, I had in mind the excellent photobook Subway by Bruce Davidson. Published in 1986, Davidson delved into the underbelly of the New York subway system to record a snapshot of characters who filtrated the underground during that time period. The bright colours and urban style of the people he photographed inspired this shoot, although of course, this is a modelling shoot as opposed to documentary.

I used a Nikon F100 with the classic (and heavy) AFS 24-70mm f2.8 zoom along with two off camera flashes and studio umbrellas to light the scene. I set up and previewed the shots using my D750, into which I dialled in the same aperture, shutter speed and ISO, before switching to the F100 to take the photos.

I prefer to set the flash by eye using the digital screen as opposed to automatic flash settings, and personally create the look and feel of the lighting, rather than allowing the flash to automatically do this for me.

Interestingly, before the advent of digital cameras, I saw a documentary where a photographer used a Polaroid in a similar way – the Polaroid would spit out an instant photo and the photographer was pre-viewing the flash settings from that.

All of this has to be done quite quickly and efficiently as you don’t want your talent standing around waiting for you to get your shit together.

Ama is a dancer and brings an attitude and presence to the photos. I have worked with her previously for other shoots, and enjoy working one-to-one with models such her; chilled out, falls into a pose naturally, and has great eye contact with the camera.

Often I will give minor directions to the model to improve the shot and create interesting angles in their pose, but I avoid micro-directing; if your model needs that amount of fine-tuning in a pose, you may need to reconsider who you are working with.

I prefer to work very quickly in modelling shoots, in order to capture an energy and vibrancy and tend to try different poses rapidly and move to a variety of backdrops within the location; modelling can be tiring work and you want your talent to remain fresh and interested.

In order to work quickly on the day, I always scout the location beforehand and make some visual notes with my phone; that way, I already have an idea of what I want to achieve for the shoot, rather than standing around scratching my head wondering what to do next.

I make a lot of notes beforehand and scribble down ideas for poses and shots in a sketchbook and will show the model prior to starting the shoot so they can see the vision and provide an opportunity to suggest ideas. This shoot was completed on just one roll of film and the five photos here are the best of the selection.

The only aspect I added in post- was a slight purple tint to the photos just to make it look a bit more colourful.

My impression is that Kodak Portra 400 has great natural colours successfully recreated that 90s New York City urban aesthetic which absorbed my attention so many decades ago.

www.alimc.com.au @alimcphotos

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