Sue G People and Place Learning Log : Exercise: Reviewing a portrait sequence....

Here again I took my camera to a friend's house using her sitting room as the location for the portrait shoot - a decision based on convenience for my 'model' rather than a location best suited for the actual shoot. It was a needs must decision but offered a chance to work with someone I know well and was likely to have a more relaxed approach than in my previous attempt. I don't think that this was a 'cop out' more an opportunity to learn from my earlier portrait shoot.

Helped by Charlie the dog, we agreed that the settee was the best bet after moving it slightly to remove a picture from appearing to emerge from Vanessa's head and taking the light coming in from the right into consideration..Charlie lost interest very quickly
( fortunately ).

I talked over with Vanessa what I wanted to do and how it might pan out. Using a tripod allowed me to come back to a comfortable distance for Vanessa and as our chat ranged over a variety of topics, Vanessa relaxed into the session making it easy to take a range of facial expressions and angles.I was looking to capture a few poses that 'summed up' Vanessa, including a particular pose very much her own. I guess I had in mind images that would be good to share with her family.This idea came from Vanessa mentioning being delighted that her nephew had taken an image of her off Facebook and printed and framed it for her as a photo gift .

There were two expressions that came through the photo shoot which seemed at the time to be what I was looking for. These came and went but after I had captured a number of versions I decided that it time to call it a day.

Back at home, reviewing looking at the images in Lightroom, I came down to four images that came out best ....difficult to say which was the best single shot.If pushed I guess that I would opt for P745. I think it fair to say that the later review was slightly different to how I saw it at the time of shooting probably more due to there being more time at home and more images easily accessible to consider...and of course, no model to consider...