Today in class I will be participating in a studio workshop on portraits delivered by Rebekah who is a HND student. I am looking forward to this as I feel that portraiture is an area of photography I need to improve in as I have only started to learn about portraits and studio photography since starting the HNC course. I want to learn more about the lighting techniques used in studio portraits and how lighting can be used to evoke certain moods in the portraits.
In the session I was given a handout that explained what portraits are.
It said "Portraits are artistic representations of a person and its aim is to display the mood and personality of that person. Portraits and head shots are not to be confused with head shots as head shots focus solely on the face and not the personality of the person."
I found that this information was useful as until reading this, I did not know the difference between a portrait and head shot so it was helpful to have this explained to me. The handout also explained about different light modifiers and the positive and negatives of all of these. I found this information useful however I think it was very focused on the modifier itself rather than linking the information to portraits. For example as feed back I explained that it would be good if she could have explained what effect each light modifier had on images and what mood they created.
Overall I think the session was good as it helped me understand what a portrait was and how to go about creating one. Below are examples of images I captured of Nat and David:
For this photo of Nat, I used a red background as she explained that red is her favourite colour and it makes her feel confident. When talking about herself she said that she views herself as a witch and believes she has mystic powers. I therefore decided I wanted to have her posed with her head slightly away to represent her having a secret side to her. I also had her hands in an intriguing and mysterious position to represent that she views herself as a mysterious and mystic person.
For Davids portrait, he explained that he is sometimes quite shy and feels in a box due to his disability. However, he also explained how he is a very happy person and enjoys having a laugh so i decided to use a dark background and create shadows in order to represent this contrast in his personality traits. I asked David if he could position some of his hair in front of his face to represent his shy side. I like the shadowing effect this created on his face as the shadows were really fine and i think this made the image a bit more interesting and dynamic. Furthermore I asked David to smile in the picture as I also wanted to show that he is a very happy person that's always smiling or having a laugh.
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