As my first experimentation with portraiture didn’t produce many successful outcome I decided to do a 2nd photo shoot in order to get some better photographs. For this photo shoot I plan on taking pictures of my family all out together at a bonfire. I though this would be a good idea as It would be very interesting to capture a family environment dynamic in my images, rather than taking more photographs of people in work environments.
Contact sheet
My most successful outcomes
Analysing my images
Visually, this image is very successful for various reasons. Firstly, both the people are centered in the frame and they’re also both smiling while slightly engaging with the camera. Although they’re not fully looking at the camera, I think the image is still successful as it turned out to be a more candid shot. Another reason why this image is visually pleasing, is because of the emotion in the portrait. It is clear to see that they are both very happy, and their body language shows that they must be very fond of each other.
The technical elements of this image also helped to make It successful. This image was taken with a shutter speed of 1/100 meaning that it wasn’t extremely slow, but still allowing a good enough amount of exposure time for the image not to turn out very dark. I also used flash to take this image as it was dark outside, and I also set the white balance to flash so that the colouring would be accurate. I also used an f/5.6 so that the photo had a shallow depth of field, as I dint want the background to be too distracting.
Visually, I really like this image. In the frame you can see a male and a female with a child on her shoulders. I think that is a successful outcome as all three subjects are engaging well with the camera, and they are all well centered in the frame.
The technical side of the image was a bit more challenging for me as it was difficult to get good quality pictures in the dark while shooting manually. The ISO of this image was quite high, and the shutter speed was quite quick, around 1/250, but i had to be careful not to have it to quick as it would make my image turn out very overexposed. I also made sure to use flash, and to set the white balance to the flash setting also so that colours could be photographed as accurately as possible.
Evaluation
Overall I think this photoshoot was for more successful compared to my last one. This time I made sure to direct people more in order to capture the images I wanted, instead of just photographing them naturally. This meant that I had more images where the models were interacting with the camera, making the photographs more successful. I also think that the quality of the images were far better too. Although at the beginning it was very hard to shoot good quality images in the darkness while using manual settings, through trial and error I was able to find suitable settings to get me good quality images. I made sure to use a flash, and a fairly quick shutter speed of around 1/250, making sure that it wasn’t much slower or quicker so my images wouldn’t be blurry or underexposed, I also had my aperture set at around f/5 as I didn’t wanted to get a fairly long depth of field so that the surrounding environment could be seen in order to give the photos a bit more character and context, as I think that’s what truly makes an image appealing and interesting. However, next time I will experiment using a higher aperture as I think some images would also look nice with a shallow depth of field as it would mean that there would be more focus on the people as they would be the main focus of the photograph.