DD3: Douglas Dubler

Many photographers rise to a certain level, achieve a certain success and are renowned for a few years, then fade into obscurity as the next great digital hope takes the stage for another fleeting scene. Douglas Dubler, on the other hand, has been at the top of his game for nearly four decades. Moving decisively from film to digital very early, he left a film legacy of underwater and commercial work well before advancing into the 21st century on a quest to continually perfect his precisely crafted fine art, fashion and exquisitely glowing beauty images.

Having studied at Boston University, his early mentors included Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi, black-and-white master Ansel Adams and 1960s fashion photographer Neal Barr. Over the years his top-tier client list has included Max Factor, Redken and Coty. In the photography industry he acts as a consultant to major players including Broncolor, Epson, X-Rite and Nik Software.

In these challenging times, how does Dubler continue to land assignments and produce commercial and fine art work at the highest levels? Speaking with him recently near his home in New York, I ask what drives him. “Excellence—the quest for excellence. It’s not economics,” he says.

And yet he’s very successful, I point out. “It is because I follow Joseph Campbell’s advice to ‘follow your bliss.’ I had an intention when I was 25 years old—I wanted to do magazine covers and cosmetic ads. I figured if you want to get known, just do the covers, the inside is less important. And those covers got me a substantial national cosmetic advertising business.”

Earlier, after his fine art studies in sculpture and silk screening, he gained an appreciation for form and space by helping Noguchi install huge granite sculptures in Los Angeles. After becoming intrigued by photography, Dubler devoted decades to learning the craft. “The zone system Ansel Adams used I adapted for my own fashion shoots in the studio by controlling and varying the contrast of the lighting,” he says. An Adams associate showed one of Dubler’s early black-and-white prints to Adams who remarked that it was a great photograph but a really terrible print. Would his friend (Dubler) be interested in learning how to make a better print, Adams inquired. When the associate returned to Los Angeles and reported this, Dubler jumped in his car at 2 a.m. and drove to Carmel to see Adams. “Ansel was a bit surprised, but that’s been my attitude throughout my career. When [you] see opportunity, know that it won’t knock twice or even knock loudly, so you have to be smart enough to see it and take advantage of it.” While admiring Adams’ work, Dubler made a conscious decision not to pursue fine art photography as his primary career. “I didn’t want to gamble with that. I wanted a better lifestyle.”

In terms of pursuing opportunities, Dubler converted to digital early on, foreseeing that it would be the future of photography. He observes that anyone shooting film today must either have an obsession with the past or some particular technical reason for using film. Otherwise, he feels, it’s foolish not to shoot digital.

How does a photographer’s style develop and evolve? Style, for Dubler, is a work in progress. While the overall approach may not change, the subtleties do. “I think it takes at least a decade to get a bead on where you fit into things. I never made an effort to adjust that to court the marketplace. I live a couple of blocks from the Met [Metropolitan Museum of Art] and I get my influences from going to museums and looking at great painting and sculpture. Fine art is more an influence on me than photography.”

To hone his photographic craft, he studied with Adams, worked with an expert from Leitz to learn optics and explored lighting, always seeking out experts whose knowledge could save him time. Then he applies the knowledge with what he terms a holistic approach. “Like a tree adds rings as it grows old, I’ve got a lot of rings and they represent tools,” he comments. “So when I go out to do a job, I’ve got a full toolbox.”

One example is a shutter drag technique he developed over the years. When I saw a striking example of it at a trade show a decade ago, I hesitatingly asked him how he did it. Generously, Dubler explained it to me immediately, with no hesitation. At that time, he used gelled lights to create a richly hued background, and then moved the camera during exposure to splash the colored background light onto part of the normally color balanced model/foreground. While he now feels that that look was very obvious (not the technique), today he’s using HMIs to create more subtle variations on the same theme. However, he also wryly (and rightly) notes that, “Knowing how something was done doesn’t mean that you can do it.” Not many top photographers would reveal their secrets in detail to someone they just met. Dubler also gives back to the industry by teaching at Brooks Institute in California, the School of Visual Arts (NY), the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, Hallmark Institute and others.

“Many times, I’ll start out planning to make something more elaborate, but then pull back immediately,” he comments. “My wife, Sarah Johnson, a well known shoe designer, has a very evolved minimalist aesthetic, which I share. It’s something I learned from Noguchi. For me, photography is an art of exclusion, not inclusion. I’m not a pictorialist or a photojournalist who is telling a story in photographs. That’s somebody else’s job. My job is the tight beauty shot or the abstract still life. I’m interested in color and composition and crispness and in subtleties. I like people to look at my photographs and after a few minutes say something like, ‘Oh, I didn’t see that before—look at that triangular catchlight in the eye.’ It’s a combination of many steps and details that makes the difference between a good photograph and a great one.”

Dubler pulls his iPhone out of a fabric pouch, color coordinated with his sweater (he does work in fashion, after all) and hands me the device to let my fingers do the walking through the latest images in his portfolio. Shot on a Nikon, he has adjusted them in Nikon’s Capture NX2 software to achieve “perfect detail in both the shadows and the highlights—a 10- to 12-stop dynamic range. With film, it’s not gonna happen,” he asserts. In contrast to his precisely controlled studio work, these new images were shot outdoors and include adobe architecture, the Santa Barbara Mission and details of a long abandoned, rusting 1950s oil refinery site atop toxic waste that he had to post a $2 million insurance bond to get into. Another image is an elegant still life. To convert it from color to black and white with a zone system look, he used Nik Silver Efex Pro, a plug-in that he helped Nik software develop.

While he usually works on assignment, last year Dubler unholstered his Nikon D3X to create an image on his own—his intention was for it to become a national ad for that camera. It’s a close shot of a woman’s face half covered by a sunflower (see above). “I said to myself, I’ve got the perfect thing here. I do the perfect skin tone, I come in real tight, I’ve got great saturated colors. This would be a perfect ad for Nikon. So then I proceeded to navigate the politics of getting it used, which isn’t an easy thing.”
But Dubler persevered and ultimately prevailed. The image plays in ads in many magazines, and at www.nikonusa.com. You can even download a large version of it in the D3X section. If you do, you’ll discover extremely fine detail in the flower and water drops, subtle color shading in the eyelid and incredible texture and definition in the eyelashes, lips and skin. Click on the eye to enlarge it further and you can even see the clumps of mascara on the individual eyelashes!

Dubler observes that his approach, after four decades, is mature. So that if a client is looking for something trendy (and less expensive), he’s not the right person. “At this point,” he says, “I’m only doing projects where I do the creative, the concept. I’m not doing anything from a layout. I’m often hiring the art director to work for me. My motivation is not money. It is to have something out there that is a visual testament to where I’m at, my particular vision in space and time. One thing that characterizes what I do commercially is my production values—very good models, very good hair and makeup, elaborate sets. Years ago I determined that this was a good way to separate myself from the competition—using the best.”

He continues, “I’m driven and somewhat obsessed by the technology. I use the best cameras, the best lenses. I’m not going to use any of the variable f-stop glass. I have the 70–200mm f/2.8 lens from Nikon—it’s a $2500 lens, and it’s what does the job for me. I also use the 85mm f/1.4. For lighting, I use Broncolor flash equipment and have been involved with them for 40 years. Nobody makes anything better. I need these very, very precise tools that allow me to vary the power by 1/10 an f-stop and change the color temperature via the pack.”

Concluding, Dubler says, “If you look at the greats in the history of art, many of them produced their best work after the age of 60, some even into their 80s. Irving Penn, who died last year, was 92 and still making great pictures up until the very end. So, fortunately, we’ve got a job that isn’t like being a bank executive where at 65, you’re out. To sustain a career over decades, you have to be making better and better images. I don’t rest on my reputation. I don’t take anything for granted. People ask me how I work with these clients for all these years—it comes down to how good the pictures are.”

To see more of Douglas Dubler’s work, go to www.douglasdubler3.com.

Howard Millard has journeyed by camel, dugout canoe, airboat, blimp, hot-air balloon, helicopter, jet and ‘66 Chevelle on assignment from Rio to Reykjavik. A writer and photographer based in New York, his work has appeared in major photo, travel, and cultural magazines and books around the world. Visit: www.howardmillard.com for upcoming workshops.