#daylight portrait

[cliquemodels]

Andrea photographed by Robert Majer

[solaris-studios]

Reading Fairy Tails By The Window

Reading Fairy Tails By The Window

I love this portrait of three-year old Vera. It’s so simple. A child’s mind at play with a book. There’s no need to smile at the camera. No need to make her say “cheese”. Just let her do her own thing.

I love her little toes, and how they are playing with each other.

I had placed her teddy bear next to her, and I hoped she would put her arm around the bear so they could both be reading the book…

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[solaris-studios]

Classical Child Portrait Session

Classical Child Portrait Session

I am so very happy with the direction my new daylight studio is going. Yesterday I had my first portrait session. Vera and Nora were my subjects, and I had a great time with them.

Photographing children takes extra patience. Photographing children using nothing but daylight takes even more patience.

When I create a portrait using flashes and strobes, I can adjust and move my lights to create…

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[iainlj-blog]

Feedback and evaluation of daylight portrait.

Feedback from class was that my daylight portrait met the brief.  They liked the colour in it, and the subject looked relaxed and natural.  It was described as quite an intimate, informal portrait too and that the subject looked as if she was in her own little world. 

They also said that the curtains and the book acting as natural reflectors was well done.  The matching of the subjects' t-shirt and curtains was discussed as well and was thought to be a nice touch.

The cropping was also discussed, but no one could agree where it could be cropped to look better, although someone suggested that maybe a square picture would have been more effective.  The sort of book that was being reading was mentioned – one person thought was that it was racy due to the red being used in the picture, but then the expression of the subject suggests a more serious book.

Evaluation - I wanted to create a relaxed picture for my daylight portrait, so using my flatmate in her natural environment was, I felt, the best way to do this.  It was developed from the Al Pacino picture that I researched, although mine was a lot lighter in tone.  The sunlight was quite bright the day that I took the picture, so I cut off some of the light with the curtain that you can see in the picture as well as the curtain that is out of shot.  That then left a large beam of light just behind her head, which bounced off the curtain.  There wasn’t a great deal of reflection from the book, but there was a silver reflector at her feet reflecting some subtle light back onto her eyes and face.

The colour match between the curtains and t-shirt was completely accidental (unlike my self portrait), but I liked the way it turned out.  The shutter speed was quite slow due to the lack of light, and I really should have used a tripod for the picture.  However, lack of space meant that wasn’t really an option – but on hindsight, I should have moved some furniture out of the way to facilitate the tripod.  A lesson for next time.

I did think about cropping the picture on the left to get rid of the triangle of light behind her head, but that would have meant cropping out some of her hair and because I liked the way you could see some light through that part of her hair, I decided to keep it in.  Possibly cropping it to the right just after the book finishes would have been better, as this would then have got the square picture effect that was mentioned by the class.

I really liked doing this assignment, and am looking forward to continuing with this type of portraiture as it’s quite challenging but also rewarding using flags/reflectors to manipulate the picture to suit your needs.

[iainlj-blog]

Final daylight portraiture images.

First one is my printed file which was shot at the bay window with a reflector to the right of the picture putting some light back into the face.

Second one is using a gate as a natural flag, as well as a willing model to pretend they were asleep.

Third was taken beside a tree with a gold reflector to the left hand side.  I've also included a fourth image to show the same (ish) picture without any reflectors to show the difference it made. 

Do you think they worked ok?

[iainlj-blog]

Daylight portrait research 4

This is similar to my first research picture, but is one that I don't particularly like.  Although the sunshine is once again accentuating the subject's hair, I find it really distracting this time and instead of looking at the woman, I'm constantly being drawn to the sun and I really need to concentrate on looking at her, which I think defeats the purpose of the picture.

[iainlj-blog]

Daylight portraiture research 3

Great use of the sunlight again in this one, as it creates the backdrop of light which I really like.  Still great detail in the eyes even though the sun is behind him and he's also wearing a cap, so there must have been some reflectors being used for this. 

Really like the symmetry in this and the lines, although not quite so sure about the angle.  Would it have been better square on?

[iainlj-blog]

Daylight portraiture example 7

After our class trip to Largs, I tried experimenting with the daylight coming in the bay windows we have.  I also experimented with different reflectors as in this picture of P, I had the light from the red curtains as well as the book and a silver reflector to get some detail in her face.

Shutter speed was slower than I really wanted but I like it. 

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