Portraiture Landscape Thursday 26th November work diary.

Shutter speed: 1/125
F-stop: 9.0

Shutter speed: 1/125
F-stop: 9.0

 Due to being ill, I missed the lesson on Tuesday 26th November, so when someone was round, I went out around town to take photos of her. I really enjoyed this because I was given the chance to put my portraiture knowledge from last lesson including landscapes in the background. When taking photos, I found myself using a lot of Alec Soth's work- including the whole body and landscape surround- to tell a story (as shown on the top left hand image on this blog). However I also used Thomas Ruff's work, just instead of a plain background, I had a landscape/ objects instead (as shown on the top right hand image on this blog).

A photo I like from this shoot...

I really like this image because it's a simple dead pan but shows not only the background, but the whole body. I tried as much as possible to center her head on the top line of third. I also like the simplicity of this image, I didn't want her to sit on the very top step because otherwise she would have looked too close to the door, which I didn't want. The shutter speed I used here was 1/125 and the F-stop was 9.0. Most of my images from this photo shoot had the same camera settings, I should have had a wider range although I did change the ISO. 

A photo I don't like from this shoot...

I don't like this image because she is mid through speaking so her mouth is open- I would have rather this of been a dead pan. Another reason I don't like this photo is due to me missing the lesson, I didn't want all my shoot to be of the person shown above, so after college I done a shoot with a couple of other people, but this was at 4:00 so it was quite dark, this meant to get the best lighting I had to use the flash but this artificial way of lighting creates shadowing which I really would like to avoid when taking portraiture. The shutter speed here was 1/125 and the F-stop was 8.0.   

Progression...
If I were to re-do this task again, I would definitely make sure that all my images were taken during the day so I don't need to use the flash because not only does this wash out the subject, it also removes the landscape/ objects behind it. I would also vary my camera settings a lot more to get a variety of different images. I would also like to position my subject further away from an object (for example position them away from the wall) so I can manually focus my image, making the background out of focus and my subject in focus. Examples of way I would like to progress my work are shown below...