P&P: Exercise 8: Varying the Pose

I'm not interested in posing people, and the people I tend to associate with who might be willing to help me are equally disinterested. I looked at some examples and even sent my model a copy as a suggestion of what we could do, but once we got together we found the poses somewhat absurd. He didn't offer and I didn't insist.  I'm 53, he's in his 40s.  Who cares?

Until I had the images lined up in a collage I didn't realize how similar they looked.  Damn. Not likely to redo these as time is pressing.  I spoke with someone at OCA who said I could get a maximum 6-month extension if I complete three assignments by July 03.  The gives me six weeks to knock the work out.  It won't be pretty, but it will be an interesting challenge.

P&P: Exercise 7: Focal Length

"...in general, the longer the focal length, the more attractive the face will appear."

P&P: Exercise 6: Review a Portrait Sequence

This subject of this portrait session is a rather animated human who in day-to-day life is likely at the most unlikely moment to pull a face or strike a pose.  For this session I had him sitting at a desk in a classroom, with me on the other side, my DSLR on a tripod.  Light came from windows to my left, as well as a bank of overhead fluorescents.  On occasion I prompted a pose - "a student just walked in" - but for the most part the subject used the opportunity to showcase his talent - unprompted.  Unfortunately, ISO and shutter speed settings were not adequate to the task and many images were marred by excessive motion blur.  A good example of this from a recoverable image is the one of the hands-up-surprised-face.  Fortunately, the eyes are sharp enough to make this one of the more interesting images in the set, though there were perhaps equally dramatic and interesting poses that didn't make the cut. 

P&P: Exercise 5: Eye Contact & Expression

I was on the way to the nearby temple when I passed a man with a beautiful white beard.  I couldn’t stop then, but knew I could likely find him again in the same place days later.  This is a spot where independent truck owners gather to be hired out.  When they don’t have any work, they just sit on the kerb waiting, chatting, smoking, and watching Dubai drive by.

P&P: Exercise 4: Active Portrait

The brief here was to produce a set of images in which the subject was not posing for the camera, but engaged in an activity.  The purpose here was not to document the activity, but to capture the subject unaffected.

Apon is a young Bangladeshi assigned to clean the classrooms in my wing of the building.  I usually see him every evening immediately following conclusion of class as mine room is the last of the night.  I recorded him for a couple of evenings and found the biggest problem is that he likes performing for the camera.  Technically, the yellow walls seem to make the images a shade of sickly, so I reduced saturation to try and create something more palatable.

I don't feel these are the best images I can do, but I'm anxious to make some headway here in the course and don't want to get bogged down in perfecting the set.  Ideally, I'd like a faster lens, because even shooting at high ISO I still got a bit of blur and motion in the image.  Not always bad, but I'd prefer something cleaner (no pun intended).

#

P&P: Exercise 3: Light

It's been too long since I last posted an exercise.  There were many excuses for doing so but won't go into them here.  Suffice to say I feel I've been stuck and in order to get unstuck I need to post whatever I've got and build up a little momentum.  Since all the stuff for the first assignment isn't included in the course mark, I feel more free to post less than what I'm happy with on the chance that I'll get back into a regular groove.

This exercise calls for four to six head-and-shoulder images of the same model under different lighting conditions in order to demonstrate the effect of light on the face. As I don't have a model to drag around town, I shot myself using the Nikon D5100 with remote release.

The photos here are much like those I did for an assignment for a previous course: http://freedomtolook.blogspot.ae/2013/05/assignment-four-applying-lighting.html

(Outtake:  800is0, 5.6, 0.8)

P&P: Exercise 2: Thinking About Location

P&P: Exercise 1: Scale and Setting

I signed up for P&P in July.  I finally took my first portrait yesterday.  It has taken me that long to find someone I felt comfortable asking.

VJ is a nice guy, easily approachable, and I felt if anyone would agree it would be him.  He didn't exactly jump at the chance, but he agreed, and I got my first images.  While photographing he appeared self-conscious.  Other people were around and may have noticed.  The same was true of SH.  I've seen him about before, but I don’t believe we've ever spoken.  I approached and chatted him up a bit, flattered him on his dress, and then asked if I could take his photo.  Here is a good reason I don’t like this:  I would never have mentioned his appearance except as an inducement to get him to agree to being photographed.  Not that I was dishonest about his appearance,  I genuinely did appreciate it.  But it's not something I typically mention to anyone.  SH laughed nervously and ignored my request.  He relented after I requested a second time, but he was obviously uncomfortable, perhaps especially so as three women were off to the left chatting and paying attention.

However - after showing the images to the subjects, they both asked for copies!  Hopefully they will approve of the processed results.