Ingrid Abraham: Photoshoot

Showing posts with label Photoshoot. Show all posts

Thursday, 21 July 2011

Project 4: An Active Portrait

Brief:

A subject in a natural activity
Concentrate on the person and the facial expression

This shot is one of a sequence from a photoshoot in May of this year. Charles is a hip hop and artist asked me for some ideas on how he should pose. I know that most hip hop artists gesture a lot with their hands while singing but it would have been difficult for me to describe what I had in my head and he would have appeared quite wooden.

I asked him to sing one of his songs (not necessarily at full volume), and he immediately started gesticulating in a natural and spontaneous way.

What have I learned?
I found that once the subject was engaged in an activity, he almost forgot about the camera and didn't have to think about how to pose (nor did I!).
This wasn't planned, but his right hand acts as a leading line taking the eye to his facial expression. I also like the slight blur in his fingertips which shows that he wasn't static.
One of the things to be careful of when photographing singers is getting shots of them with their mouths wide open or 'pulling faces'.

Tuesday, 4 January 2011

Project 1: Portrait, scale & setting

Brief
Four scales of portrait in one session:

Face cropped in close
Head and shoulders
Torso, taking into account arms and hands
Full figure

These were taken recently for an urban styled photoshoot with a model and make-up artist, on London's Southbank. The location was chosen to provide a vibrant backdrop and the challenge for me was to try to prevent it from becoming the main focal point. I moved the model around to alter the background and varied the distance between her and the walls to enable me to throw them out of focus. I recently acquired an 85mm 1.8 lens and this was my first outing with it. I used available light and a silver reflector for the close-up shots.

What have I learned?
Image 1 - In this shot I found a way to make the eyes prominent (with the aid of make-up) even when the model is looking away from the camera.

Image 2 - In order to keep the eyes prominent, I have blurred the foreground whilst cropping the background to a minimum. I usually concentrate on simply throwing the background out of focus, but this photoshoot really made think about different ways to use it.
Image 3 - In this shot I was trying to provide some separation from the background by using a section of wall that contrasted with the model's clothing. I also angled the camera to produce some leading lines.
Image 4 - I debated whether to try and lose the detail in the background of this shot and finally settled on this with only a slightly soft background. Both myself and the model ran out of ideas with regard to the placement of hands. I didn't want the hands hanging limply by her sides, but found hands on hips or hands held up to the head becoming quite repetitive.

Sunday, 7 November 2010

Family Photoshoot

My friend booked me to take some pictures of herself and her children on Monday 25 October. She wanted pictures taken at her home, but I told her beforehand that I would like to also use her garden depending on the weather. As it turned out, the weather was perfect - bright but overcast for most of the time though the sun did make an appearance once or twice.

This is a very small selection of the images:

I wanted to make use of the strong backlight coming through the living room window. I used a silver reflector as the subjects are all young and ISO 400. The image was a little underexposed but this was rectified in Lightroom.

This was lit by combining natural light and ISO 1000. I added a little bit of fill light in post-processing as the girl was in shadow. I like the effect of the lens distortion on the boy's legs. His mother commented that she liked this too.

I bounced the flash off the ceiling to my left (ISO 1000) and applied a cream tone in Lightroom. I think the shadow adds form to the image, but I diffused the light because I didn't want the shadow to have hard edges.

I used the bounced flash technique again (ISO 400) and applied a black and white vignette in post-processing. This is my favourite shot of the day as it conveys the relationship between mother and daughter.

What have I learned?

I'm very pleased with the quality and impact of light in all of the images. For the first time, I felt confident about placing the subjects and making decisions about using my reflector and/or speedlight.

I am also happy that the pictures look natural and not posed. I was fortunate to have subjects happy to have their pictures taken and quite relaxed in front of the camera.

Tuesday, 20 July 2010

Contemporary Vintage Lover Photoshoot

Taken on Sunday in Holland Park.

Posted via email from in5ers's photography posterous

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

Vampire Photoshoot

On Sunday afternoon, I met up with fellow members of a photography group for a vampire themed photoshoot in Guildhall, London. This is a selection of the colour and infrared shots that I took.

Sunday, 20 June 2010

Shortest Night

Yesterday, I joined a group of fellow photography enthusiasts for an all night photoshoot on the shortest night of the year. We met up at 17:00 in a pub near London Bridge and set off to catch the final rays of daylight before the sunset at 21:21. The sun was due to rise on the following morning at 04:43 so we had the entire night to capture the city.

This was one of the first pictures I took with a newly acquired Nikon D700. Taken from Tower Bridge at 20:24 as the sun started to set.

This was my first attempt at zoom burst photography. Taken from London Bridge at 01:34.

This is one of a series of images taken whilst walking along the Thames Path. The time was 02:26.

Another image from the Thames Path, captured at 03:08. The London Eye is one of my favourite London landmarks.

This was one of my final images, taken from Charing Cross Bridge at 03:58 as the sun started to rise.

What have I learned?

This exercise was gruelling but thoroughly enjoyable!

My daytime photography is primarily concerned with controlling light since it's usually readily available. But in this instance, I had to think more about accessing it first and then controlling it.

I was very aware that my approach was quite different during this exercise (apart from the mandatory use of a tripod and very long shutter speeds). Night-time photography seemed to give me more creative license - I wasn't concerned about whether subjects were evenly light, in fact, the greater the contrast, the better. Also, blown highlights were viewed as a thing of beauty!