Portrait Photography

The Glasgow Bridges

01.21.11

Today I was in Glasgow shopping of all mundane things. The value of my S95 couldn’t have been more apparent since I was not intending to take pictures, but I had taken the S95 in my inside pocket. (It’s that small). There was freezing fog everywhere, and it looked bleak and uninteresting. Suddenly I emerged near the Clyde and saw this lovely light piercing the mists. Enter the little chap with it’s compact convenience!

This is the view of the railway bridges over the Clyde into Central Station from the “Glasgow Bridge”.

This is from a similar viewpoint, but a telephoto image to pick out the silhouettes of the railway pylons. The damp wall of the bridge works well in the low glancing light.

Same again here. Look at the sunbeam below the bridges; amazing.

I would like my thanks to be noted for the birds who performed so wonderfully in this image.

I’m not so sure about this one, the wall splits it a little too centrally although the bus adds context and reality.

Two black and white bridge details exploiting the soft, low contrast light.

They say the best camera you have is the one you have with you. The S95 was a better than basic choice for me, this cyclist’s camera phone was his best available choice.

I really like the S95.

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Alison

01.19.11

This was my second choice of portraits from my session with Alison during my 100 portraits project. This was a darkening, rainy evening. 6.30 on the 26th of March according to the exif data. The combination of Alison’s bright dress, the bright graffiti and ISO 1600 on the very capable 40D I was using at the time made it all OK. Alison made my first choice for me, she insisted on a playful, dirt-smeared-face picture; it’s therefore nice to post my actual choice.

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Tarbert Loch Fyne

01.18.11

This was the dramatic sky I encountered on a visit to Tarbert last September. The range of brightness between the sky and the buildings was huge and so you could only get a correctly exposed sky or a correctly exposed street. To get both, handheld, I used auto bracketing and the impressive burst speed of the Canon 7D (7+ fps) to get three exposures with minimal movement between them. The trouble is that you then have to import the three images into “photomatix” or a similar HDR software to merge them to even out the exposures. It has only taken me 3 months or so to get round to this!

Addition:

Just for Julie, here are the three exposures used to make the HDR.

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The Paps of Jura from Kintyre

01.09.11

This is the view I encountered on the 21st of December last year, on my way home from a short stay in Campbeltown. This was the late, low-sun view from the beach at Bellachantuy on the Kintyre Peninsula. What made me stop to try this as a mainly portrait guy, was the desire to play with an amazing new toy. I recently bought a Sony NEX 5 as I really want to try a large sensor mirrorless camera as I think they may have real potential for portraits without frightening your subjects in the way that my fairly large Canon 7D can. An interesting feature is that there is a massive third-party industry in adapters for other lenses. Naturally I can’t resist that, and so blew £27 on Ebay for an Olympus OM adapter. My amazing and handsome friend Martin, (who has featured a few times on my blog) has loaned me a few of his Olympus OM1 lenses to try out. Back to the plot: I had the 135mm prime on the NEX 5 body, (manual focus only), and it seemed to really suit this shot straight into the sun and back towards the Mull of Kintyre. I plan to play a lot more with these Olympus Zuiko lenses, but here is my first posting using manual focus, and no “exif” data, so I can’t remember the f-stop or ISO or anything. Hope you like it. Much more soon about this seriously fun toy.

This was a return to my Canon 7D and a wide angle, standard zoom. This was a little further along the peninsula towards Lochgilphead. The view is straight out towards the Paps of Jura. The view from the peninsula is truly magical and I strongly urge you to visit it sometime soon, the view out to eternity is essential to see if you want to explore Scotland.

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Michelle

01.06.11

It’s been a while since I posted a second choice from my 100 portraits project. This is Michelle, we did the photographs at the People’s Palace in Glasgow. This one was taken after we were thrown out of the indoor garden area. We took advantage of the lovely, freshly cleaned fountain and late low light to snatch a very Glasgow portrait for a very international and far-travelled young woman.

Guess what, another choice with my Sigma 28mm lens. Why do magazines continue to encourage portraiture by walkie-talkie or semaphore with the 100mm ideal length advice? I don’t think so….

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