Assignment 1: A comprehensive portrait

For the first assignment for People and Places, I have chosen to photograph my father who has been visiting us from Australia for two weeks. I have attempted to capture various aspects of his personality in each of the photos. In order to help this, I planned my shots loosely in advance and asked him to bring along a couple of props to help in the photo sessions.

Photo 1. Reading

From Assignment_1_PP

17-30mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/6.7, 17mm, 1/125sec, ISO 200, mains flash light with shoot-through umbrella, photo cropped in photoshop.

Photo 2. Glasses

From Assignment_1_PP

24-70mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/6.7, 70mm, 1/125sec, ISO 200, mains flash light with shoot-through umbrella.

Photo 3. X-Ray

From Assignment_1_PP

24-70mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/9.5, 60mm, 1/250sec, ISO 200, mains flash light with shoot-through umbrella.

Photo 4. Bow-tie

From Assignment_1_PP

24-70mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/4.5, 40mm, 1/60sec, ISO 400, 580EX Flash with diffuser, lights on in bathroom.

Photo 5. Gym Gear

From Assignment_1_PP

24-70mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/4, 51mm, 1/250sec, ISO 100, natural light.

Photo 6. Pouring a beer

From Assignment_1_PP

24-70mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/2.8, 24mm, 1/60sec, ISO 400, 580EX Flash with diffuser, lightened slightly in photoshop.

Photo 7. Binoculars

From Assignment_1_PP

24-70mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/3.5, 70mm, 1/60sec, ISO 100, natural light plus fill flash using 580EX Flash with diffuser.

Overall this has been a challenging project. I chose to photograph my father knowing that we would only have two weeks to get all the photos taken. This turned out to be enough time and I am happy with the resulting portraits,which are all showing a different aspect of his character and are each quite different photographically also. I have tried to use different angles, lenses and light, as well as body positions and various poses. Dad helped a lot (he is an amateur photographer himself) by suggesting poses which was very useful and made me feel more confident during the shoots. My biggest challenge still is to feel confident and make my subjects feel comfortable in front of the camera, and knowing how to direct them. I plan to continue to take portraits of people in semi-organised settings when I am able in order to further improve on this deficiency.