High-school friend Ray was the second portraiture-practice session I did while visiting my folks over the new-year break, the first having been a family friend. I like the results from the first session, but I didn't like that I was still so awkward/skill-less on how to conduct, on a person-to-person level, the portraiture session. Technical skill with the camera accounts for maybe 10% of what's needed... the rest is all in how you interact with the person.
Shoving a lens in someone's face and saying “smile” may work fine if the someone is a professional model, but it sure makes normal people feel awkward, something not conducive to photogenic results.
This time I had an epiphany: even if I feel awkward/skill-less on how to do it, pretend I know exactly what I'm doing. The confidence-building effect on the subject should be the same.
So, I went over to Ray's house and talked a bit about taking a picture, surveyed the living room for a good angle, then set up a silly shot to break the ice:
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/4, ISO 6400 — image data
contemplating life's mysteries with Bloom County
But after that I moved into stealth mode, just chatting about work/life/kids/etc while I snapped pictures, more or less omitting the whole photo thing from the conversation except for the occasional “look this way” or the like.
So not only did I get to catch up with an old friend, during the normal course of conversation I got all kinds of looks for the camera (mostly laughs), and he seemed to become more comfortable. Then at the end we could try some specific looks.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1600 — image data
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1250 — image data
It was a different experience with his wife, Jill. I pointed the camera at her, she flipped a switch that turned on a beaming fashion-model, and I took, literally, two frames, and we were done.
I missed focus on this frame of the pair (I need to not forget about the “10% technical skill part”!), but one can sort of hide that with a bit of “funky joy” negative clarity in Lightroom, something you can really do with a guy's portrait.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1800 — image data
version of the lead photo
as might be useful for an online avatar
Nice catch lights in the eyes. What lighting arrangement did you use?
Setting him in a chair in the middle of a room that had a large window to camera right. —Jeffrey
I don’t know if you’ve already seen this, but Strobist had a wonderful series of articles on portraiture last year by master portrait photographer Sara Lando. I found them fascinating, and they’ve definitely changed the way I think about shooting portraits. The first one can be found here: http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/2012/08/on-photographing-people-pt-1.html.
Maybe that’ll help with the mental aspect of it.
Yes, I saw those when they came out… well worth a read! —Jeffrey
Bloom County – perfect! Great photos.