Nick's photography journal: Portrait, scale and setting

The "getting started" introduction to P&P stressed the significance of planning and preparation in relation to undertaking the various projects. Richard Maxted, the professional photographer who ran the Studio Photography course at City and Islington College in April 2010 also made it clear that the set and lighting was arranged beforehand using a dummy so that no time was wasted when the model arrived.

Subject
I asked my wife to be my model for this project, and my aim was to take photographs in the style of a conventional portrait - a photograph of the sort that someone would have framed on a table in a house or an office.

I have taken innumerable casual photographs of her, and the ones that stood out are shown below. I wanted to deliberately replicate this soft lit style.

Val in a friends flat in Amsterdam August 2009

Nikon 70-200 mm at 100mm: Iso 250 f4.5 for 1/20th seconds

Observations

She is sitting in a corner between two windows in overcast weather. The light is primarily falling on the right hand side of her face viewed from the front. Light from the other window is backlighting the other side of her hair and face. The lighting is low contrast and her face is somewhat darker than the background.

The pose is relaxed, she is looking directly at the lens with her hand resting on her head. Her hand does not compete visually for attention and is unobtrusive.

Val in a street cafe in Italy May 2010

Nikon 18-70mm at 55mm: Iso 200 f4.5 for 1/160th seconds

Observations

The table was in the shade in an alleyway at midday. The light was again low contrast with soft shadows. The horizontal framing reveals a rather distracting background, but it seemed right in this setting to include a glimpse of the other people and the alleyway.

Location and lighting

I chose our living room as the location for this project using natural light:

The room is rectangular with patio doors on the narrow side but no windows. My idea was for the subject to sit or stand close to the doors.
The background should appear dark as the far wall is much further from the light coming in through the doors. I thought that a light background would not suit the type of photograph that I wanted to achieve.
The camera would be outside on the patio looking into the room, with the light coming from behind the camera onto the subject. This should provide the soft light and muted shadows that I was looking for.
The patio doors face north east, and close to the patio there is a wall of trees and shrubs which block out light from the sky. As a result, there was likely to be an abnormally cool colour temperature and possibly a green colour cast to the light.

Pose and position of figure

Having tried photography in studio lighting conditions a couple of times in the past, I was aware that for an inexperienced photographer, it is difficult to judge which positions for head, hands and body will be successful visually.

As a result, I decided to use myself as the "dummy" to try out a variety of poses and positions.(This idea was prompted when looking at the display of Robert Mablethorpe's self portraits).

In three sessions, I tried positioning myself in the doorway and various distances back in the room, I tried standing poses and sitting poses in different chairs and on the floor. I also varied the framing between head, head and shoulders, head and torso and whole body.

After studying the results, I selected three of the positions to use in the subsequent photo session with my wife as the model.

Self portait photo selection

I also selected the best self-portraits of each framing (head and shoulders, head and torso, head only, and full body) for reference.

Head and shoulders