How We Shot Our First-Ever Book For Men Celebrity Cover Using iPhone X
You should spend as much time with the person you’re photographing not taking the picture as you do taking the picture.” That’s photographer Matt Barnes’s first rule of thumb for taking portraits — and one of the reasons we asked him to shoot Don Cheadle for the Book for Men’s first celebrity cover. His photos are piercingly intimate, the result of getting as close to his subjects as possible. And that’s also why he enjoyed shooting it on iPhone X. “You break down a big barrier shooting with the phone,” he says, “because it feels like a normal thing to do. You don’t have a $10,000 camera in your face. It’s more chill, less intimidating.” That means he can get right up to his subjects, and take photos that are more personal. Of course, it helps that iPhone X is also an incredibly capable camera. “It has great tonal range,” says Barnes, “and the dual lens is great for portraits. We used both lenses on this shoot. The camera overall is pretty superior — it’s the best one yet.”
MATT’S TRICKS
• “Portrait mode is cool because you can get great depth of eld, which is a real photographic look. It makes your subject stand out against the background.”
• “The phone works really well in the brightest light possible, so you can use it almost anywhere without a big lighting setup.”
• “The black-and-white lter is great. These Don Cheadle photos just used the iPhone camera — not anything fancy I did in Photoshop.”
• “We shot the BTS video in 4K with the phone. There’s no stabilizer or anything like that — we just held it the way anyone would, and edited right on the phone.”
