Monday, February 2, 2009

Was it only four days ago?

Step 2: Headshots (20 - 39 portrait)
Take tightly framed headshots, because they are compositionwise easy.

All you have to do is to get your subject relax.

Concentrate on this for the next 20 shots. Learn to talk with strangers while taking photos, try different tricks to make them feel more comfortable. Don't be too picky on whom to photograph, it's not the time yet.


Yes, that's all!

What about relaxing myself???

Twice yesterday I had my yack and wandered off with a "look do you mind if I pop back and take a few more, I don't want to interrupt you again... blah blah blah." That seemed to do the trick, but it only works if you know your subject isn't going to be moving, and if you can compose yourself in the meantime. Strangely, it gave the subject "permission" to get on with what he was doing, and I didn't have to go away.

Might be worth trying again.

4 comments:

Julie said...

Hah ... on the way home I gathered in two more subjects ... the chatter was masterful ... they moved for me ... they were happy to cooperate.

However, the photos are as boring as!

It is me trying to get context. And trying to get what I want in one shot. I think I will drop that one and instead take a range of shots and only post one. I will have to resort to reading the manual this evening. It was 530pm and there was shadow everywhere.

One was a family from Beijing showing their son where his father studied 30 years ago. The one was Samantha, an ABC, who is in her final year of an Econ/Business degree. I will post them on Wednesday so long as the lead shot is one that I am happy with.

Now I am off to take my anguish out on the weeds that have decided to populate my back courtyard!

Julie said...

Just a thought ... the problem with talking with subjects as you shoot is that they look at you and stop what they are doing ...

bitingmidge said...

Talk, shoot, thank them, make as if to leave, spin around and ambush 'em!

Now to flash for a second:

I was going to write to you separately, might make a post of this sometime not too soon.

I think you have a Canon D400?

In daylight it should compensate pretty well with the onboard flash, it's what they are best at.

In the dark, you mentioned you were over exposing the subject, "try turning it down" I'm fairly certain you have flash compensation capability, if you can't find it I'll investigate further.

Also, it is a very harsh flash by it's nature, so diffusion is the go, you can make a simple deflector to experiment (providing you have a ceiling to bounce off) or I'm mucking round with a free diffuser design which I'll share if it works! More later!

Ann said...

I'm getting the context I want, just telling them to go on doing what they were doing but the damn p&s won't focus fast enough and they are all blurred. I think with the p&s I have to get them to stand still. Found out by accident that the SLR has continuous shooting in Portrait mode, but I don't often have that with me and I need to keep shooting to keep my confidence up. The ones I'm taking this week are a mixed bag, I'm happy with the composition but the quality of some is terrible. They look fine on the screen but when I blow them up they are out of focus.

i did find where to turn down the flash on the SLR but its fiddly and not something I'd be able to do on the spot.

My word verification is "luckisms" - ha, ha, ha.