After doing a few recent portrait sessions, I came to a realization - I don't do that well with adult portraits. I really have to work at it much more than with kids. After thinking this through a bit, I came to the conclusion that I'm not very good reading adult body language from behind the lens. In short, I need more practice.
I take a lot of pictures of kids - my kids, other people's kids (portraits, school programs, etc.) and have more practice and learning in reading children's body language from behind the lens. As a result, I have better timing and a better sense of how to photograph kids. Part of it is ease - most kids have few inhibitions and have no qualms about getting in front of a camera. Get them to dance, spin, jump, and they relax right away and you can get some great shots.
Adults, on the other hand, realize that picture that's being taken will capture their physical character traits in all their beauty or "uniqueness." And that picture will stick around. In fact, it's likely meant to be broadcast to a wide audience via cards, emails, blogs, portrait in the living room, etc. Adults realize all this and have a tendency to clam up, stiffen up, and get tense in front of the lens. They are suddenly very conscious and feel very exposed in front of the lens. The body language that children so easily broadcast is guarded and closed off by many adults. Teenagers - take this and multiple by 100.
So the question is - how to get adults - or teenagers, with all their hypersensitivity - to relax in front of the camera? How to read that adult body language, get them to reveal their personality, and, in short, lower their guard and become child-like for just a bit?
One of my photographic goals of this coming year is to work on grown-up portraits (adult portraits just doesn't sound appropriate) and document what works and what doesn't work. By putting something in writing here the thought is that it will help me process and think things through a bit more.
Related to this, another goal is to do a photo of the week, with a walk-through and some notes about it. Again, putting things down helps me slow down and really process something. So here's to a new year of photographic progress!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Working with layers
I recently took the girls on a day trip to the crater Puluahua, which is near the Equator. We've been to the top and looked down into the crater, but this time we went down into it.
It was neat because we were up in the clouds, which added to the feeling as we listened to A Christmas Carol.
As we came back out, I saw some cows grazing in a field; with the clouds rolling through and the dry corn stalks, it had a real autumn feeling to it. I wanted to get a photo that really emphasized all of those elements of autumn - the harvested stalks, the clouds and mist, and the desaturated colors. After some work I ended up with the below photo:
The original photo didn't quite capture what I was looking for, so I did some post-processing work using various layers.
One of the first layers I added was some additional mist. I kept waiting for more clouds to roll through but they stayed higher than I wanted. So I took a picture of the higher clouds and made that into a separate background image:
I added this as a layer on top of the original and then adjusted the opacity of it so I got a sense of the mist, but it didn't obscure the image below it. This was a quick creation - I plan to work on it a bit to make it a bit more random. Right now there is a definite grid pattern, resulting from me copying and pasting bits of the same thing over and over again.
Next I added another layer on top of the original - a black and white copy of the original. I adjusted the contrast so it was a bit darker. Then I lowered the opacity of this layer as well so I ended up with a desaturated version of the image revealed.
Then I bumped up the saturation of the colors on the bottom original until I had what I was looking for as far as colors go.
Finally I added a slight vignette around the image to darken the borders a bit.
It was neat because we were up in the clouds, which added to the feeling as we listened to A Christmas Carol.
As we came back out, I saw some cows grazing in a field; with the clouds rolling through and the dry corn stalks, it had a real autumn feeling to it. I wanted to get a photo that really emphasized all of those elements of autumn - the harvested stalks, the clouds and mist, and the desaturated colors. After some work I ended up with the below photo:
The original photo didn't quite capture what I was looking for, so I did some post-processing work using various layers.
One of the first layers I added was some additional mist. I kept waiting for more clouds to roll through but they stayed higher than I wanted. So I took a picture of the higher clouds and made that into a separate background image:
I added this as a layer on top of the original and then adjusted the opacity of it so I got a sense of the mist, but it didn't obscure the image below it. This was a quick creation - I plan to work on it a bit to make it a bit more random. Right now there is a definite grid pattern, resulting from me copying and pasting bits of the same thing over and over again.
Next I added another layer on top of the original - a black and white copy of the original. I adjusted the contrast so it was a bit darker. Then I lowered the opacity of this layer as well so I ended up with a desaturated version of the image revealed.
Then I bumped up the saturation of the colors on the bottom original until I had what I was looking for as far as colors go.
Finally I added a slight vignette around the image to darken the borders a bit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)