Portraiture: A Master Class

The Charismatic Portrait
"For the Las Vegas portraits, I was working with three assistants and four prearranged sets built in an unused kitchen in a casino," Watson says. "That was expensive -- I was paying for everything myself. But it was very efficient. I started the project after completing a really classic black-and-white project on Morocco. So I wanted the Las Vegas project to be very different -- color, more impressionistic. And that sort of dictated how I did the portraits.

"I was shooting mostly with a 4x5 camera, and occasionally my Hasselblad. I'm a bit old school, and I believe in film for this sort of work. Working with a 4x5 and a digital back has a delay. And with portraiture you need absolute control; you need to capture the moment you want. You can't have the subject look at you with an expression that says, 'Are you ready yet?' That's deadly.