Best of a sequence - photography

Even though the flash lighting was set up in a similar way to project 5 Eye Contact and Expression, I still needed to experiment with several positions and angles for the flash before asking Val to take up position. I have given a description of the set and settings in the "techniques" section below.

Shooting process

In general I followed the process suggested in the course notes:

• The camera was on a tripod, and I was using a cable shutter release to trip the shutter as she moved into different positions. I could therefore talk and keep eye contact with her during the session.
• In the first position, Val was standing leaning against a chair, with her arms behind her back resting on the chair. I asked her to move her head and gaze to various positions, and reviewed the results on the camera screen. In this position her shoulders seemed slightly stiff and I asked her to move her arms in front to relax her shoulders for a second series of different gazes.
• I then asked her to sit on the chair sideways resting her hands on the back of the chair and took a further series with different gazes.
• I started to notice that some of the photos were coming out significantly underexposed. This was puzzling as the camera exposure and flash settings were fixed on manual settings. I eventually realized that I should occasionally be checking the "ready" light on the flash unit, as the flash had started to take longer to recycle, and I was tripping the shutter before it was fully charged.
• I then asked her to sit on the chair in the normal seated position, but by this time, the sun had set and it had turned too dark in the room to see her eyes and her face. Instead of turning the room lights onto a low level, I continued to take photos in the darkness.Whilst the exposures and focus of the resulting photos were still OK, we could not see each other and I was unable to guide her positions as I had done before. I therefore stopped the session.
• I could see on the camera screen that the normal seated position was less pleasing than the sideways seated position, so we changed back to the sideways position and tried some different hand positions.

I realized soon afterwards that it would have been better to turn the room lights onto a low level, which would have given enough light to see each other. With the dimmers switched low, the room light would probably have been too weak to be seen in the photos.

Overall sequence

I reviewed the sequence of photos using Lightroom to select the reasonable photos and reject the failures. I ended up with a sequence of twenty and this is the contact print for these twenty.

Nikon 18-70mm at 70mm: Iso 200 f8 for 1/60th seconds

I would categorize any of these photos as acceptable, so to fulfill the requirements of the project, I was left with the task of identifying the "good" and the "best". I have found that I need to have in mind a specific purpose before choosing photographs. In this case, I decided to select a photograph that I would like to display in a frame at home.

My approach to this is to use Lightroom to compare a few photos at a time. I started with the standing poses with the face flat to the lens and picked the best one of these.

Selection 1 - Facing lens

Nikon 18-70mm at 70mm: Iso 200 f8 for 1/60th seconds

I then picked a best one from those with the face facing left and right:

Selection 2 - facing left

Nikon 18-70mm at 70mm: Iso 200 f8 for 1/60th seconds

Selection 3 - facing right

Nikon 18-70mm at 70mm: Iso 200 f8 for 1/60th seconds

Of the seated poses, I eliminated the three photos where Val is seated normally on the chair as she looked slightly slouched over. I picked the best one of the other seated poses.

Selection 4 - seated pose

Nikon 18-70mm at 70mm: Iso 200 f8 for 1/60th seconds

These selections I classed as "good" and from these I decided that Selection 3 - facing right would be the best overall as a framed photograph.

When looking at the photos on the camera screen during the shoot, my aim was to judge which poses seemed to work the best visually. I then tried to use this information to guide the model in other poses.

When reviewing the photos subsequently on the computer screen, I was looking at all aspects of the photographs to decide which had the best mix of pose, expression and general composition.

Techniques

I modified the flash lighting used in project 5 so that the subject's face was illuminated more from the front, as shown in the diagram.

The flash head was also angled upwards so that some light bounced off the ceiling. In this position, the reflector seemed to serve no purpose and I therefore left this out.

I used the Nikon 18-70mm lens instead of the 18-200 mm lens that I have used in the previous portraits. Exposure mode was manual and focus was set to manual. I used an aperture of f8 to allow for some movement of the models position, and I reset the focus when she changed position. The SB600 flash was set to manual. I found that I needed the flash on full power to provide reasonable light at Iso 200.

Conclusions

The project enabled me to get some valuable practice at planning and executing a portrait session with a subject:-

- in a way it was good experience to have the unexpected exposure problem, although this was a distraction from directing and taking the photos.

- I will know next time that I must keep a low background light level (daylight or artificial) even when using flash as my light source.

- for assignment 1, I will need to think of the style of the portraits. This may entail planning the location, clothes and postures. The photos I have taken for this project are quite plain, with a blank background, frontal lighting style, and everyday clothes.