Exercise: An active portrait

The brief for this exercise is to take an active portrait, the idea being to show the expressions on the subjects face rather than go into too much detail about what they are actually doing.


I was quite lucky with this I was asked by my hairdressers if I would help them out and take some photographs for one of the hairdressers assessments, where she needed photographs taken of the hair make up and styling she had done on her own model.  I happily agreed to help them out if they would help me in return, something the hairdresser was happy to do.

I decided I wanted to photograph her as she worked and hoped that she would be so busy concentrating on what she was doing she would forget about me, I think she managed to do that quite well. 

After many attempts I finally decided on this one, as you can see the concentration on her face and that she has forgotten all about the camera and is just busy doing her job.

It is quite dark in the hairdressers which worked in my favour slightly as I didn't want too much of the surroundings to be seen, the settings I used were F7.1 1/125's shutter speed iso 200 and a flash white balance. The focal length was 22mm.

I try to keep post production of my work to a minimum if possible and all I did for this photograph was to crop it down to remove some of the excess background, then made very slight adjustments to the brightness and levels in the layers palette. I then flatten the layers and applied the unsharp mark.

Exercise: exerimenting with light.

This is a project all about light ending up with an exercise experimenting with light.

Light can make or break a portrait, harsh light can be good on a character portrait especially if you want to highlight lines and wrinkles in the face but this type of light would not be suitable for babies or wedding photography, where softer light would be more flattering.

For this exercise I need to try and use the same model and take four head and shoulder portraits in different lighting conditions. The brief says to take between four and six photographs in various lighting conditions, some will be taken indoors including one which I will take in my studio and others that will be taken at various other places.

For this first one my model is sitting facing the window the camera settings are: F5 1/100's shutter speed ISO 200 white balance was daylight and the focal length was 52mm.  I also used a reflector to keep any shadows at a minimum. I notice that there is not a lot of definition to the face, there is quite a lot of softness around the jaw line and this would work better on a female face than a male.  I would be looking for a sharper jawline for a male subject.

This one was taken sitting in the same position but this time I lowered the slatted blind, the camera settings used for this one were:F3 1/100's shutter speed 68mm focal length ISO 200 and white balance daylight.  Again I cropped the photograph and adjusted the brightness and levels slightly before flattening the image and using the unsharp mask. This time there is more definition to the face, the left hand side of the subjects face is slightly sharper as are the facial features. I didn't use the reflector for this shot.

Photograph three was taken in the soft morning light where the sun was just rising above the roof tops,. I positioned my husband so he was lit from the front. F7.1 1/125 shutter speed the iso was 200 with a daylight white balance setting and a focal length of 200mm. In photo shop I adjusted the levels very slightly flatten the image and used the unsharp mask to finish. This is quite a flattering look using this light it softens lines and wrinkles slightly.

Photographs four and five were both taken in my home studio, I used a black backdrop for the first one with a soft box at F8 to the side of him and a beauty dish on F16 to the front, the camera settings used  were F8 shutter speed 1/125's flash white balance iso 400 with a focal length of 50mm. The iso is rather high and to be honest I hadn't realised that I had left it on that setting, I normally start from the iso and work my way round the setting when I am photographing using lights. There is shadow to the jaw line but I think the light is slightly too bright to the front.

The second one was taken on a separate occasion, this time I used a white back drop, the setting used were F8 1/125's shutter speed iso 100 flash white balance with a focal length of 48mm.  I used a reflector this time moving it around until the shadows were 'filled' with the light.  I used the same two lights as before but this time I brought the beauty dish forwards which gave a more even light. I adjusted the exposure very slightly in photoshop before again using the un sharp mask.  I also had a dust spot which I removed using the spot healing tool.

It is interesting to see how by using different light sources you can get a variety of effects, this is something I will continue to experiment with.