FOOTnotes · Photography
How Peter Gowland Built a Pinup
Inside the lighting, composition and posing of the photographer who shot more than 1,000 magazine covers, and what foot photographers can take from him today.
Peter Gowland made glamour look effortless. Behind every sun-drenched beach frame and every studio cover was a set of rules he worked out over six decades and wrote down in more than 35 books and guides with his wife and partner, Alice.
Those rules were built for photographing women. Most of them are about the whole figure: where the light falls, where the legs point, where the feet land in the frame. That makes them a ready-made toolkit for anyone who photographs feet. This feature breaks his method into its parts and ends with a checklist you can take to your next shoot.
Where he learned light
Gowland learned lighting on Hollywood film sets before he ever ran a studio. He was born in Los Angeles on April 3, 1916, the son of the actor Gibson Gowland, and worked as a double and background extra as a young man. Standing on those sets, he watched cinematographers light the stars, and that glamour lighting became the base of his own style.
During World War II he served as an Army photographer. Back home in 1946, he and Alice built their first studio in West Los Angeles with a GI loan. In 1954 they moved into a home and studio in Rustic Canyon, where they worked for the rest of their lives.
Their outdoor studio was the coast. Santa Monica’s State Beach and the beaches up to Malibu were their regular locations from the mid-1940s through the 1970s, which is why so much of his best work is lit by the California sun.
Sun, sheets and strobes
Gowland treated the sun as his key light and spent his effort controlling it, not hiding from it. His guide walks through his beach and poolside shots one by one, and the same few moves keep coming back.
Late-afternoon sun for drama. For a swimsuit shot at Paradise Cove in Malibu, he used hard afternoon sun and let the slats of a walkway throw a pattern of shadow across the model. Another late-afternoon session posed a model against concrete pipes so the light and dark areas of the pipes framed her body.
Fill the shadows at noon. Midday sun leaves deep shadows under the eyes and along the body. For a shot of Mara Corday on a sailboat boom, he fired a strobe to fill those shadows.
Backlight the hair. At a pool with Jill Osborn, the sun came from behind as a hard rim light on her hair, a strobe filled the front, and he framed a dark area behind her so the bright edge stood out. An electric fan kept her hair moving.
Know when flash would have helped. Looking back at an overcast shoot at State Beach, he wrote that flash would have lit the model’s face better. Flat grey light was not enough on its own.
Cheap reflectors. According to the photographer and educator Joe Edelman, Gowland bounced light back onto his models with white bed sheets and cardboard on the beach at Santa Monica. He stuck to white, not the gold reflectors that later became fashionable, because his tanned models already had the warmth he wanted.
Filters for the sky. In black and white, a yellow filter darkened a blue sky behind the model, and a yellow or red filter added drama.
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Peter Gowland at work — a large-format camera on a studio stand, two flood lights, and the release cable in his hand while the model holds her pose on a draped riser.
Indoors: window light and simple setups
Indoors, Gowland kept his lighting simple: one or two sources, often a window, and a plain background. The setups in his guide:
Even studio light. One light on each side of the model, seamless white paper behind. A clean figure that reads at a glance.
Window plus flood. Window light from camera left, a flood light from camera right. A soft main light, with the far side lifted so it doesn’t fall into black.
Window only. Window light from one side in his daylight studio. Gentle falloff across the body, the most natural look.
North light outdoors. Open north light, the model in front of a white garage door. Soft, even light with a bright, clean background.
Hair glow. A bare electronic flash behind the head, plus one key light at camera left. Lights up teased hair so it separates from the background.
The pattern is the same throughout: a soft main light from one side, something to lift the shadow side, and a background that never competes with the model.
Composition: diagonals, corners and no wasted space
Gowland’s first rule was that a picture has to work as a composition inside the frame before anything else. Move the model or move the camera until she is clearly the subject, and never let the background or props overpower her.
Build on the diagonal. He told readers to compose with strong diagonal lines. A diagonal also lets you bring the camera closer, because a body laid across the frame fills more of it.
Head in one corner, feet in the other. For full-length shots, his guide places the head near one corner and the feet near the diagonally opposite corner. The feet are not an afterthought; they anchor one end of the picture.
Never a stick figure in the middle. He warned against a stiff, upright figure centred in the frame. Even a twist of the body improves it.
Fold the legs for a tighter frame. Seated poses with the legs drawn up make a more compact composition, useful when you want feet and face in the same close shot.
Fill the rectangle. Come in close rather than cropping a small part of the negative later, which costs quality. In one hand-and-arm pose he filled the frame so there was no wasted space.
Clear backgrounds. Outdoors he looked for a clean area such as sky or smooth sand. On the beach, the sand itself gave him a background with nothing to distract.
On the Telephone, Jo Anne Ahele, 1954 — our favorite Gowland. The legs run one long diagonal from the soles in the top corner down to her face: his feet-in-one-corner, head-in-the-other rule, with nothing in the frame to compete.
Posing and directing the model
Gowland posed from the legs up and set the face last. His guide reads like a director’s checklist.
Use props to place the legs. With Mara Corday, a stool steered her right leg into a diagonal. A bent knee gave Rose Marie Bowe a soft S-curve; a raised leg did the work for April Satow.
Pick angles that suit the body. He noted that a three-quarter rear view works only for slim legs, and that leaning slightly forward changes the line of the upper body.
Show hands from the side. Flat-on hands look clumsy; side views read better. Feature them only when they are beautiful.
Give her something to touch. On the beach: towels, rocks, seaweed, boats, balls. In the woods: trees, flowers, leaves. At home: chairs, pillows, curtains, magazines, a wine glass.
Set the head angle last, because expressions don’t last. Head up shortens the nose, stretches out a double chin and draws attention to the mouth. Head down gives a more intimate look and draws attention to the eyes, but only when the nose is short or average. A three-quarter view slims a wide face; a thin face is better straight on. A profile flatters almost anyone.
Ask for eye contact. He found that a model looking straight into the lens made the most intimate image.
For action, shoot low and early. Shoot from a low angle with a fast shutter, learn where the peak of the movement falls, and press the release a fraction before it. A reflex camera needs that extra moment for its mirror to move.
The camera he built for it: the Gowlandflex
Gowland built his own camera because nothing on the market did what he needed. He owned 17 Rolleiflex twin-lens cameras, but they made small square negatives, and magazine covers wanted the detail of a 4×5-inch sheet of film.
In the late 1950s he combined the two: the Gowlandflex, a twin-lens reflex that shoots 4×5 film. One lens shows the photographer the picture while the other takes it, so he could compose and watch the model right up to the moment of exposure, the way he did with a Rolleiflex, but on a negative about four times the area. The glamour model takes matched lenses from 180 mm to 300 mm and works horizontally or vertically.
His design rule was simplicity: no gadgets to break, no frills, and no manual needed. As he put it, “A camera is only a light-tight box.” He sold more than 600 of them, and photographers including Yousuf Karsh and Annie Leibovitz have used one.
Shoot it like Gowland: a checklist for foot photography
His rules were written for the whole figure, but they carry straight over to feet. Here is how to use each one on your next shoot.
Shoot in late-afternoon sun for texture: low, hard light shows the arch, the soles and the line of the toes.
At midday, fill the shadows with a flash or reflector so the underside of the foot doesn’t go dark.
Bounce with white, not gold, if the skin already has warmth. A white sheet or foam board is enough.
Backlight bare feet on sand or by a pool and frame something dark behind them so the edge of the light shows.
Indoors, use one window and one fill on a plain background, so nothing competes with the feet.
Lay the body on a diagonal with the feet in one corner of the frame and the face in the other.
Draw the legs up in seated poses to get feet and face into one tight frame.
Steer the legs with a prop: a stool, a step or a towel decides where the feet land.
Fill the frame in camera instead of cropping later.
Clear the background: sky, sand or a plain wall.
Set the face last and ask for eye contact, even when the feet are the star.
For movement, shoot low with a fast shutter and fire just before the peak of the step, kick or splash.
Sources
Gowland Guide to Photography, petergowland.com — lighting setups, composition, posing, head angles, action and filters.
About Peter and Alice, petergowland.com — film-set start, studios, State Beach, books and covers.
Gowlandflex Cameras, petergowland.com — design, lenses, numbers sold.
Peter Autobiography, petergowland.com — the “light-tight box” quote.
Peter Gowland, Wikipedia — birth date, father, Army service, books, Gowlandflex users.
The Photographer Who Built His Own Cameras, Utterly Interesting — learning light on film sets, the Rustic Canyon studio, Alice’s role.
How to use a reflector the right way, Joe Edelman — white sheets and cardboard on the beach at Santa Monica.