Week 8 Portrait/Street photograpy

Homework from Dave this week was people (street photography or portrait).  I think street photgraphy is one of those areas that when you try to do it, it becomes a lot more difficult than when doing it by accident or simply not trying.


I ventured out into the Christmas Markets at Manchester and trying to capture people without them knowing was tricky, I did manage to get some shots but have simply deleted them as they weren't very good at all.  I think nerves and paranoia kicked in here with some gruesome looking people, shovelling burgers and hotdogs down the throats, giving me the evil eye and looking very wary.  I will simply have to try this again and next time round be a liitle bit more blunt and just ask these people if I can take their picture.


Portrait Photography, this is a lot easier than street photography only you need people who are willing to have their photo taken.  When you do find somebody willing, why do they do nothing but pull silly faces and look ridiculous!


I came accross this description below which explains portrait quite simply:


Portrait photography or portraiture is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people (a group portrait), in which the face and expression is predominant. The objective is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the subject. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is the person's face, although the entire body and the background may be included. A portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the camera.
Unlike many other photography styles, the subjects of portrait photography are often non-professional models. Family portraits commemorating special occasions, such as graduations or weddings, may be professionally produced or may be vernacular and are most often intended for private viewing rather than for public exhibition.
However, many portraits are created for public display ranging from fine art portraiture, to commercial portraiture such as might be used to illustrate a company's annual report, to promotional portraiture such a might be found on a book jacket showing the author of the book.


Capturing somebody's personality is one of the objective's of portrait and with not being able to get out and about to much this week I decided to shoot some images of my partner and then some more of my families children.  I find that when using children as subjects it is a lot easier to capture their personalies as they are not concerned about how they will look in a way that adults are.


So here is Dan sleeping which is soemthing that definately represents his personality and like most people must have a cup of tea before getting out of bed in the morning.  I have used aperture priority using various Fstops with an ISO of 400, I have edited these slightly using B&W and adding light/dark vignettes to create a sleepy feel to the image.

F/4.5, S 0.5sec

F/11, S 1.6sec

F/4.5, S 0.5sec

F/ 4.5, S 0.5sec

F/9, S 1sec

F/9, S 1.6sec

F/7.1, S 1/4 sec

As i said above using children as subjects seem to be a lot easier and I find the images appear to be more natural with no staging as with adults. Here is my niece and nephew playing with the family pet, again I have edited slightly by cropping, adding vignettes and using B&W.