On Mar 24, 2011, at 12:47 AM, Tim Øsleby wrote: > Thanks Paul. My opinion and experience is appreciated. > > The modell told me he _really_ liked the first one. Maybe you have put > words on why?
It's a good shot. > > Let me explain why I explore these odd angles, to see if I can make them work. > > I am looking for something different. There is so many portraiters > doing the same thing, using the same aesthetic. I want to do something > that makes me a slightly different portraitist. I think I must be > different to differentiate myself from the comptetition. > I do find errors in what I've done here, but I think I should keep > looking for a while. Tim, I am in much the same boat as you (kind of scary considering your history). I enjoy doing portraiture, but I'm always trying to take pictures that others haven't done to death, so I think about these same things a lot. I am also always trying different angles to get something new and different. The challenge is that the reason that most of these angles are rarely used is because they rarely work. I keep trying them, and finding out why they aren't often used. I also try to do cool and creative lighting. Unfortunately, on my budget it's hard to come up with lighting that people with far more experience, and budget, haven't already done a lot of. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear/see them. It seems, to me, that the biggest opportunity for creativity is with props and backgrounds. Being short on money, time and creativity, my general expedient for the background is to not light it. The easiest way for me to not have anything ugly in the background is to leave it as close to black as possible. When that isn't an option, I like to use large towels (bath sheets) and a long lens, because towels come in all sorts of pretty colors that can complement people's skin and wardrobe, plus they're easy to store in the towel closet. With a shallow depth of field and the towel far enough back, nobody recognizes them for what they are. You just have to use a long lens so as to limit the field of view of the background. You've already discovered one trick, and that is to use a cliche format to set a mood. The movie star pose of the first shot works great, and it makes your friend look like a movie star, because those are the people we're used to seeing in photos like that. Another thing you can do is to have people bring a few things that represent what they do, or what they like. If someone likes to do woodwork, have them pose with a saw, or a plane. I find that I often get my best pictures when we get silly. One thing you could do is to have people play with their favorite toys from their childhood. When people are having fun, their smiles are genuine, and their happiness shows through. There are a lot of pictures of middle aged men in business suits, but not many of middle aged men in business suits playing with toy cars. Or of a 70 year old women holding her childhood teddy bear. And, of course, there is the option of taking a standard photo style, or angle, and using that for an entirely different type of photo, as one of your juxtaposed elements. I'm not telling you to do these exact things, I'm trying to give you some new directions to think in to come up with your own ideas for pictures that haven't already been done a lot. And, by the way, you've already done some great portraits. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
