Reflection on Assignment One and the way forward...

With little or no experience of portraiture other than holiday/ event 'snapshot' type of images, I couldn't help but approach this first part of the course both apprehensive and intrigued at the same time. Though using close friends and my partner as models, I still couldn't help feeling a little wary each time I approached a portrait exercise. 

Remembering that many photographers e.g. Richard Avedon or Annie Leibowitz occasionally used 'stand ins' to set up a session in advance of the model arriving, I managed to get hold of a model standin (Fred)..The idea was to save time at a session by using Fred as a standin either as part of a previous reconnaisance or on the day before my model arrived. A good idea in principle but practicalities ie. only head and shoulders limited Fred's usefulness - a use ploy though for the exercise on light. 

'Fred'

Looking now at the seven portraits that form my first assignment, a number of things strike me.

Firstly,spending time checking out the location repays significantly though taking simple shots to gauge position and lighting does not allow for the on the day challenges so I need to always build in a little more time on the day. For example, some of my favoured spots' at the Hilsea lines were complicated by a student camera crew also filming on the same day of my intended shoot and the owners of the bastion workshops using their entrances and blocking sight lines and access with their vehicles.

Feedback from models also suggests that while they felt comfortable with what I suggested, the kind of poses and how we would approach things etc., I do need to give them a better idea of the time, i.e. their time,needed for the 'shoot'.

Using a low aperture to blur out the background doesn't always work as well as might be expected as occasionally it produces a strange background when the image is enlarged.See P773 below:

P773: F5 @ 1/125  43mm  ISO 100

Expressions and poses...my tactics for relaxing my models worked well though maybe I shouldn't approach a session so much with pre set ideas of what I wanted to capture in terms of expressions. And I perhaps need to ask folk more for their ideas for various poses - what they feel comfortable with as this did offer better images sometimes.

Images taken outside and activity or particular stances worked better than my attempt at formal interior portraits. This was partly due to finding a suitable location inside but perhaps more from lack of skill re lighting interior portraits with and without artificial lighting. I need to get to grips with using an external flash unit on and off my camera. And I also want to find myself a short course on portrait photography to strengthen my technical skills here and to explore the creative side of this kind of photography further.

So, from being very wary and not sure if I was that interested in portrait photography as a practitioner, I find that I want to know more, gain more experience, practise and develop my skills here. And my admiration of such as Jane Bown, Annie Leibowitz and other giants of portrait photography just continues to grow...