SELF PORTRAITS AND PORTRAITS PART 1

13. Play With Backgrounds

The person in your portrait is the main point of interest – however sometimes when you place them into different contexts with different backgrounds you can dramatically alter the mood in a shot.

16. Take Unfocused Shots

As photographers we have ‘sharp focus’ drummed into us as an ultimate objective to achieve in our work – but sometimes lack of focus can create shots with real emotion, mood and interest.

There are two main strategies for taking unfocused images that work:

1. Focus upon one element of the image and leave your main subject blurred. To do this use a large aperture which will create a narrow depth of field and focus upon something in front of or behind your subject

2. Leave the full image out of focus. To do this again choose a wide aperture but focus well in front or behind anything that is in your image (you’ll need to switch to manual focussing to achieve this)

Settings—The Other Subject
The settings in which you make pictures of people are important because they add to the viewer's understanding of your subject. The room in which a person lives or works, their house, the city street they walk, the place in which they seek relaxation—whatever it is, the setting provides information about people and tells us something about their lives. Seek balance between subject and environment. Include enough of the setting to aid your image, but not so much that the subject is lost in it.

I chose this image for environmental portrait because the setting that she is in really shows her passion for art because it has paintings in the background and she is holding brushes, so i assume she did all those paintings.

I chose this for my second environmental portrait picture because it lets yo assume that according to the setting, the man sitting n the couch is the man who is in the picture with his, i assume, dead wife. it is a sad picture but at the same tom sit brings you joy.

I chose this picture for photographer self portrait because the picture shows that the man is a photographer.

I chose this as my second photographer self portrait because i think it is cool how the girl doesn’t really show her face. I think in a way it could be a metaphor because you never see the photographer anyways, so even in the self portrait, you can’t see her.

I chose this for a casual portrait because i feel like this is a classic way to take  a portrait, just have someone smile, and she is wearing pretty casual clothes.

I chose this picture for my second casual portray because even though it is not so much a casual picture, her smile is genuine, and it is a good portrait.

For my portrait project, i will probably take pictures of myself first, to experiment with lighting and setting, and the rules of photography and see which ones look good to break. after i take the self portraits, i will probably tae pictures of people in my family, probably my brother. but i thick i want to take most of my pictures outside, because inside, you can’t get the same emotion you get outside, and if i shoot my brother, i will probably take pictures of him outside because he loves outside, and that will add to the character shown in the photo. To make the shot successful, i will try to incorporate things into the pictures that the subjects enjoy, or things that reflect their personality.