Building on this terms brief and in preparation for next term’s classes you need to make 2 portraits. One portrait must be of a person you know well and the other must be of someone you don’t know.
Consider how you will approach this brief, will you approach each portrait differently? what is important in the portrait and how are you going to represent this?
On starting this task I began to think about how I would approach the portraits, as I knew from the start that I wanted to portray some of their personalities in it, but wasn’t sure on how I would achieve this.
Someone I know.
I was initially expecting the portrait of the person I knew to be the easiest as I knew this person, what sort of things they like and so on, however during the shoot I started to realise that this was not the case at all, my model wasn’t very relaxed, she wasn’t her usual self, she was shy and quite how she is around people she doesn’t know which is what I wanted to portray but I was expecting to have to fake this “shyness” a little as I thought she would be comfortable around me, so I found it quite weird to work with.
Due to the way she closed up on me I wasn’t able to get as creative as I had planned because she just wasn’t comfortable enough, I feel this is shown in some of the images particularly in her face. Her smile looked somewhat forced, whereas I really wanted her face to be more natural and relaxed.
I decided to go for the image below as I felt this was one of the better ones. She looks more relaxed here due having her head tilted down it meant that her mouth looks more natural and not like she is forcing herself to smile. Her body language just looks comfortable but still portraying her shy personality the way she is looking down away from the camera.
Someone I don’t know.
I came to this shoot more prepared than I was with the first as I was expecting this to be harder as I didn’t know anything about the person. Initially I started by talking to my model just trying to find a bit out about her, the types of things that I would have know if I knew her.
After talking to her I had come to the conclusion that she was a confident person, comfortable around others and very open. This made it really easy for me to photograph her, but also enjoyable for us both which was great and is represented in my photographs. Portraying her personality was a lot easier.
Due to her personality I was able to be more experimentive, I could get her to lay in the field and she would be comfortable doing so, I could ask her to keep her face natural and not smile and she would do it without feeling awkward. There was no rigidness to her arms they were soft and relaxed which was what I wanted from my first model.
I particularly enjoyed this shoot and I really feel that I was able to portray my models personality well.
All in all I did not expect that photographing someone I didn’t know would be easier then photographing someone I did know, so I will have to think of ways to help my model open up for future shoots, which will not only help her but will help me when I photograph someone else who is also quite shy.
I approached both portraits in a similar way, although I came with more ideas for my second portrait whereas I was happy to just go with it for my first portrait, using my surroundings to influence me.
However I am very please with how both of my photographs turned out and I feel they portray their different personalities well.
(Image 1 Beth person I know)
(Image 2 Mia person I don’t know)
Yasmin Taylor 