Portrait

In my photography class, we are starting to learn about portraits, and then we are going to capture a few of our own. We read about the things that made a portrait unique. There were different things like: different levels, getting out of the 'comfort' zone, or having the person look away from the camera. Many different things can add to create a wonderful portrait.

For my first portrait(s) I used my friend Mikey, and we just used the school yard as the setting of the photos. In my opinion they turned out really well. We had some great natural lighting outside, and there were plenty of things to use in the process of taking the photos. I didn't necessarily have a plan when we started, but after a while I started getting an idea of what I wanted to do. I used a tree as a prop, I used "out of comfort zone" when he was up in the tree, and i messed around with the focus when we was behind the fence. They turned out better than I had thought.

It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what is beauty? I ask myself that question and I would like to explore what makes something truly breathtaking. Through the art of a simple face, I would like to answer that question by experimenting with faces using different angles, lightings, and types of faces to find beauty. What is in the beauty of a face?

 This is a voicethread that I created for my digital photography class in school. My feelings and ideas about the unit and each photograph can be found in the comments. Enjoy!

 This is a VoiceThread about the portrait unit I just finished! Please feel free to comment on my work!

ed.voicethread.com/share/1668030/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlandress2013/5369276696/

I appreciate the way that this picture captures the emotion in each person’s face. You can see very clearly the others feelings, which is made even more impressive because the emotions of the photo were completely spontaneous. The only set-up part of this picture was that four people were to sit there, their positioning and expressions were up to them which is why I thought that this picture was unique in and of itself. Moreover, because the picture is zoomed in directly onto the group, you attention is drawn directly to each person, simply because they are the only subjects of the picture. I admit that the lighting could have probably been better, but all the same if I had adjusted the lighting than I wouldn’t have felt the same satisfying spontaneous feeling. Are there any other suggestions that you could give me that could have made this picture better if I had tried to adjust the scene?

For lack of a better word, this portrait is unique beyond all else. For starters, the facial expression of the subject, a 48 year old man, is just pricelessly juvenile. Also, I think that it is rather interesting how the lighting from the flash reflected off of the glass door behind him, giving him a very unique angle of lighting. Not only did the light hit him on both sides, but it made shadows in the background that draw your attention in towards the foreground and middle-ground. To add on to that, because the subject was in motion at the time of the picture his hand and head are blurred: just enough to give the picture a little bit of an artistic touch. And what’s more is that this was a spontaneous picture, not a prompted one. However now that I look back on this, I wonder if I could have used a better angle for the portrait, are there any other suggestions that any of you could make?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlandress2013/5368669595/

This portrait is my colorful portrait. I took a picture of my friend Wyatt sitting in a Starbucks because the glow of the light along with the color of his sweater and eyes all stand out in the picture. The fact that I used this as my colorful portrait shows the kind of person Wyatt is, always full of life. The fact that he also looks so happy in this photo adds to the color theme of the portrait. Even though the colors aren't very bright or vibrant colors, they still add a lot to the photo and without them the photo would not be the same. I also think it is very intriguing how much his red sweater stands out. 

This is natural light coming straight from the sunset outside the window. My friend was staring out side the window, and the way the light hit her face in some places and did not hit her face in other places made the picture look really interesting.

This is artificial light. I took this picture with just the flash on my camera. This makes my cousins face look much paler, but also makes his eyes stand out much more.

The natural light makes a white brightness, more yellow-ish and with artificial light the picture has more of white, pale glow to it.

This is a picture of my friend sitting on a bench in the street. Her tights were really bright and interesting so to show more color i decided to make every thing balck and white first. Then i colored in her accessories, like boots, gloves, scraf, skirt, jacket and her hair. I also did the brick wall behind her. To make it not look like a picture and more like a painting, I made the paint look like it was dripping off the wall. The color of her boots, and gloves are dripping on to the floor.

This is my Final for Photojournalism, and it is a collection of my favorite photos from the year. It ranges from portraits to macros and shows the range of my photography.

This is a picture of my friend Emily. I took this photo without intending to use this for any purpose but to just have a picture of my friend. Looking back on this picture, I really love how it turned out. My friend is smiling so genuinely. I also think it is really interesting how th lighting turned out. Emily's face is iluminated by the natural light that is coming in through the window behind the camera.