Assignment 208: Principles of location photography: Theme 1: Portraits

Portraits - Shoot 3

Although I wasn't able to carry our my planned shoot this weekend I did persuade my son to pose for me (in exchange for other favours such as a taxi service!) to help me work on the feedback from Steve this week.

The feedback on my first two shoots was to:

• Try and work with natural light only 
• Take a step back and not crop so tightly on my subjects to give me space to work in post production

For my first attempt we worked in the garden - the problem with these images are the background - it was very difficult to pick an area where the background would not detract from the image to keep my images in the style of my research - but there were a couple of images that I think worked.  

I hate him smoking - but you can't live their live for them - and against my own feelings I chose this image because they capture a story about him at this point in his life - the culture of his age group.

ISO 200, f3, 1/125

This image reminds me of the one taken by David Bailey of Paul McCartney where his eyes are shut and the image has a soft tone to it.  

ISO 200, f3.2, 1/4

I then took the shoot inside to try and capture low light images without a flash.  To help me achieve this I used a tripod.  (I even got my husband to participate in this session).  This was very hard - it might have helped if I had taken these images earlier in the day when the lighting was at an optimum rather than when the light was failing.  They are not the most successful images but still they might be rescuable in post production.

He was having a nap before starting out on a four hour journey to Norwich!

ISO 200, f3.2, 1/5

A rare moment of joy - not sure what sparked it!

I also had to be careful working indoors with the tripod - I have three dogs - and it can get a bit lively at times - to make sure my equip was safe the dogs were temporarily assigned to the kitchen - or in the case of the little one's snuggled up on the settee!

ISO 200, f3, 1/6

Deep in thought.

ISO 250, f3, 1/4

What can be better than a sunday afternoon on the sofa?