I have been thinking a lot about trying to make some portraits lately, to get away from only shooting dead things. The problem is that a portrait requires me to actually ask someone to stand in front of the camera, and that is a barrier that I have to overcome. Today I took the courage to ask Søren which I make the exercises together with in the course I am taking. And he said go ahead.

 I have chosen two photos I have taken of him. The first one to the right is my very first go at a portrait, and I actually think the composition works somewhat. I wanted to show him concentrating on the exercises (while I was playing around with the camera….).  A few things I like is that I do feel I capture the mood of him concentrating after three hours of intensive coding exercises.  I also like that you can see the monitor shining him in the face. It adds to the feeling of what he is doing. It is also clear what the subject of the image is, which is a very important thing.

Things that I will do differently if I should reshoot it. First of all, clean up the background. Removing the jacket in the background, would have made Søren stand out  instead of well having a jacket in the face. The second thing is the white balance, it is a bit of, but picasa as I use when I am on the run, will not let me change the white balance the way I wanted it to. So that is a lesson, get better at predetermining white balance on the shoot.  I think it can be extended to a bit more general post processing to warm the person up a bit. And last but not least, I have a thought about showing the monitor, but not sure if the fact that it is left out adds to more to the image, since it provokes some kind of imagination.

The second image (to the left) was an idea I got about making a shot over the shoulder of him, so you a head in silhouette, and the monitor. I like the idea, but I think the technical side and possibly also the composition could be improved.  The other thing that is clear about this image is that there is a quite significant vignette from the lens.

Well this is all for today, where I finally managed to get the courage to ask, shoot and post a photo of a person. A fair beginning and a fun time for me.

/Kristian

Tags: computer, concentration, indoors, People, portrait, Søren Emil Sørensen