Photography Project: Natural Light Portraits

 Today we were looking at the portrait in class and different compositional techniques and different ideas about the portrait and what it means.  We looked at shots by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, shots from Life Magazine, Bill Brandt, David Bailey and Annie Leibovitz.  I was most interested in the Life magazine images and so i went to the archive online and found this from 17th March 1972.  The article was titled 'Dropout Wife'  so I couldn't resist and this was about a woman who left her family to pursue her career and left the children with their Dad. This was at the time of the second wave of feminism and the story was about her life and attitudes.  The Photographs here by Michael Mauney.  I really liked the images and the story and i shows the importance of expressing different point of view of the time.  the photographs make this stronger and more relatable.  

'Drop Out Wife' (17th March 1972) Life Magazine

In class we then went out to take natural light portraits with our model Billie. I took around 300 shots and I started with e the setting of aperture priority F4.5, ISO 200.  These are the contacts from the shoot. 

I completed all the contact sheets both on Photoshop and on Contact sheet generator above - Photoshop contact are superior as it is much easier to read the numbers and check the images.  

In this shot the light was really good in the image with the gentle shadows of the trees on the stone and model.  This gave a kind of mottled look to the image. The aperture was wide open so this is sharp throughout and the shutter speed perfectly balanced for this shot.  I chose this shot as it uses good rule of thirds and the movement of the model as se moves her hair work well as she looks down and the sunlight hits her hair.  

I chose this shot for the low key look, its moody and sultry and this works really well with the rule of thirds landscape composition and triangle of the arm leading the viewer to the models face.  The light hitting right side of face contrasts really well the dark left side and textured stone works well as a backdrop as it does not distract from the models face.  the setting here was a wide aperture at F5.6 and fast shutter so the image again very sharp.  I have underexposed with a -1 exposure bias so create the low key look. 

I chose this image for the depth of the colours, the sun was very bright and so by underexposing by -1 I deepened the colour  as otherwise it may have looked over saturated or over exposed and detail would have been lost. Liked the pose and the angle, good sharp, clear shot

In this image again I underexposed slightly as the sun was bright and I wanted to deepen the shades and tones in black and white.  Really liked the angle and with body as leading line through the shot.  good focal length so the background drops out and the focus on the model  is perfect. 

This one I chose as it is a good rule of thirds and I wanted the river in the background, this again is nicely dropped out and softened so the focus is the models face.  In this shot she has a slight Mono Lisa smile and her look into the distance works well. 

I will finish with the shot, this has a really iconic model look to it the pose really works well and in a medium shot it is perfectly balanaced.  Again the aperture is wide and the image is sharp, with a fast shutter as it was bright sunlight I underexposed this time by -1.3, this bought out the darker shades and tones and worked very well to create a great shot. 

Reflection

I am very pleased overall with this shoot, the sunny day really helps and we managed to get some great shots.  I think the adjustments worked well.  i could have dropped my ISO to 100 but as we moved to lighter and darker areas I thought the exposure compensation would be easier to adjust and it meant more control over each shot.  We did have issues with the sun and angles so it was not directly into the camera or directly into the model's eyes!  However we worked round and changed positions as necessary.  As always some poses worked better that others but I really thought there were some great ones here.  very pleased with shots.