Portrait Photography

Iris

06.09.10

One of the greatest joys of photography is the simplest one. There are moments of pure visual joy which you can savour and indulge in, but then attempt to hold for ever to revisit and to enjoy. One evening recently, I came upon this stunning Iris in the warm, diffuse evening light in a friend’s garden, and happily had my 60mm EF-S macro lens in my car boot.

I know there is a fine line between enjoying a visual moment and ruining it by spending too much of the time messing about with camera equipment. I was very aware of this and so left the tripod in the car, and just used the macro lens handheld to catch 10 or so handheld exposures. (This meant higher ISO settings and grainier pictures). I truthfully believe that this helped me enjoy the flower even more, and took perhaps 5 minutes. A good balance in my view. This flower, with it’s iridescent purple and tiger-striped veins deserves to be looked at and thrilled at, not just photographed and archived.

Enjoy.

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Jay

06.04.10

This is my good friend and colleague Jay. Jay and I have been doing some work together in Campbeltown this week, and I took the opportunity to photograph him as we took a stroll along the loch-front. I generally try to show my portrait subjects in a number of different settings or poses, but I only took about 30 exposures of Jay in quick succession. Oddly I liked so many of these similar poses that I can only bring myself to whittle them down to 6 to share with you. The first one is my favourite, the rest are not in any particular order.

I can’t tell if this is contemplative or “little boy lost”? A friend who was strolling with us held my Canon 580 remote flash about 30 degrees to his side for all of these shots. It’s great to have a helper. The whole “session” was done in only about 10 minutes.

Jay has a real confidence, that he wears well. He is generous and looks after other people both professionally and by disposition. I think this direct and relaxed look captures him very well.

Talking of confidence though, he was too shy to also wear the pyjama bottoms!

My “Lightroom” adjustments aside, you can just see the acceleration of the warming of the light in these last two pictures. Sunset was upon us. Without the flash, Jay was just a silhouette. My 7D triggers the Canon flashes without the additional infra red transmitter; it’s great to carry one less piece of gear.

The sunset now entering its “full bhoona” phase, the flash makes the foreground colours leap out against the darker surroundings. It actually makes Jay look a bit stuck-on to the background, but I STILL love the picture enough that I don’t care; he looks seriously cool.

This last one is the only one I have used from my beloved Sigma 28mm. Very unusually for me, the rest are the 50mm f1.4. I suspect the reason these work well is that the 50mm being slightly telephoto compresses the scale of Jay against the roofscapes of Campbeltown in a nice way.

As many of you know, I really enjoy photographing people who are not confident about having a portrait done, I kind of like the challenge, and pretty much always get results that my subjects like. Jay was almost too easy for me, he behaved perfectly, was totally relaxed, looked where I asked him to look, smiled and seemed to take everything in his stride. I think I could get used to that as well:-)

Hope you like these as much as I do Jay.

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Anne

05.30.10

My friend Anne is gifted with a sense of style and self confidence that really impresses me. Anne loves portraits, and so it has come up in conversation as a possible thing to do for a long time; you can imagine my excitement when we finally decided we should do a portrait rather than vaguely talking about it. We got together last night to do the portraits and eat, but eating was entirely conditional on the photographs being “in the can” first. (Thanks for dinner Anne).

Truthfully this was just a set-up shot to get the lighting and the composition right, but as so often happens I kept coming back to it is the most relaxed and compelling picture of this set. So often when your subject “knows” you aren’t really doing the picture for real, you get great results; it’s not a ploy I would deliberately use though.

Anne has a black cat! I’m just saying…

The previous shot is really unusual for me, more “set-up” and formal than I have specialised in, so a quick return to a handheld, simple close up was inevitable. Anne’s hair frames her face beautifully from this angle.

Handheld again, I couldn’t resist the mirror. I love this composition because Anne looks confident and happy in the real image, but sad in the reflection. (ISO 1000 here as the light faded)

And finally another handheld shot at ISO 1600. Anne has this great clock and I really wanted to use it in a simple composition that reflected the slightly fantastic and surreal quality that Anne seems to me to possess. Think Alice through the looking glass? Bet you can’t guess when the picture was taken. I was really hungry! Anne has a few beautiful photographs on her walls at home. My self imposed challenge was to produce a picture that Anne will be happy to have in print on her wall. What do you think folks, will one of these meet the standard required? Wish me luck:-)

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Fiona 2

05.28.10

My lovely colleague and friend Fiona had so many complements on her outfit (including mine) that I felt fate was dictating that I had to take her picture. This portrait enthusiast knows that the fates must never be challenged, and so bowed with good grace to the only wise course of action available.

ISo 200, f2.8, (28mm x 1.6), 1/40th

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Flickr meet Achnamara

05.22.10

These are my friends Dick Edie and Jim Hulme. Two Lightroom exposures combined to cope with the huge dusk-dynamic range. (Trusty sigma 28mm)

This is the mouth of Loch Sween where my friend and colleague Dick Edie lives. Dick and I share a love of photography and we both use Flickr. Truth be told, I’m not very active now but as I throttled back, Dick started using it more. The common thread is that we were both part of the mighty, Seven Days of Shooting group in which weekly themes were translated into daily challenges which really brought your photography and creativity on. Anyway, Jim Hulme from Brisbane, AU, is a leading light in that community and is visiting his relatives in England at present. Dick kindly invited Jim to his wonderful home in Achnamara in Argyll, and thoughtfully asked if I wanted to join them; I did! (Sigma 10-20)

(Dick in the foreground on the beach) 70-300 mm lens

Here’s Dick, the perfect breakfast host in his “can I get you another egg” mode; the way to my heart anyway! (Sigma 28mm)

Dick took us to the Atlantic mouth of the Crinan Canal near his home. This was a puffer, (strictly a “VIC”) that Dick had photographed and I had seen travelling along Loch Fyne earlier this week. The sun was high and bright, which can be uninspiring for pictures, but the smoke from the puffer seemed to me to add interest along with the still, reflective water. (Canon 50 mm 1.4 prime)

OK, I have hung my hat on the portraiture hook, but I am so pleased with the curving harbour leading the eye to this colourfest of a boat from ullapool. (50 mm f1.4 prime)

Our gorgeous and charming co-host for the visit was Jacqui; I can attest that she cooks, and bakes in a way that would make Nigella Lawson weep. Truthfully I wanted the yellow of the boat to complement the green of Jaqui’s T-Shirt, but I made the error of keeping the aperture too wide. If doing it again I would choose f5.6 or 6.3 to get a little more detail in the boat to balance the picture as Jaqui was deliberately placed on the right of the picture thinking that the yellow stern provided balance in composition. Thankfully Jaqui’s eyes and warm expression carry the picture anyway. (Canon 50mm f1.4)

Having only spoken on Skype with this wonderful man from Queensland, meeting him in person was a real thrill. I will be sad when he returns to Oz. He is a really likeable man, with a killer mix of humour and warmth, and despite the endless modesty, a striking man too. (Canon 50mm f1.4)

See what I mean!

Here are the Flickr Stalwarts in their full glory, both taking sensible precautions against the uncharacteristically hot Scottish sun today. (Canon 50mm f1.4)

However Jim could only behave for a little while while being photographed, eventually the playfulness/ misbehaviour has to break through. If Mrs Jim is looking at this, could you slap him for me on his return please! Dick is modelling headgear by Buff TM).

On my way home from this wonderful time in which Dick showed us Herons and Otters, I saw these disarmingly cute geese just strolling along the road as though it was their walkway. (Canon 70-300) This was the self timer picture from last night using my 7D and Dick’s tripod and automatic mode for the first time in ages. This uses fill flash and I coped with the burned out sky by combining two lightroom exposures in Photomatix to let the happy quartet be seen with some detail of the Isle of Jura in the background. Safe home Jim. Thanks Dick and Jacqui

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