My latest interest and challenge in photography is portrait photography! While it’s still a challenge to take photos of inanimate objects and landscapes, I find taking photos of people much more interesting.
As a part of several photo groups, one thing I find that’s in common is that photographers generally don’t like having their photos taken. I’ve done some street photography, but it’s an incredible challenge to get good street portraits, especially when they are candid.
I met Mao from MaoMaoTv at a wine event and after talking about her YouTube Channel, we decided to work together to create video and photos.
In this photo shoot I used a SONY a5100 with a 55-210 telephoto lens. The lens is not fast at all (F4.5 at 55mm), and the sun was going down in Umeda at the time, so the ISO settings were high. However, the two main things I wanted to achieve from this shoot were experience in composition and communication with my model. Mao is new to modelling too, so it was my responsibility as a photographer to communicate poses to her. This was very difficult since I wasn’t sure what to aim for, but after a post-shoot analysis I think I learned some key points about Portrait photography.
I’ll share these photos with my analysis and some critique from other friends.
If you have any comments or questions, please post them below!
Natural Hand Placement
This is the first shot of the series. I like Mao’s natural hand placement. I was completely unconscious of this during the shoot, but hand placement is something I want to be aware of next time. You may notice there is a strange blue tinge to the light on her right eye. I think this is actually from a neon sign nearby. I didn’t pay enough attention to that either. I’ve got a lot to learn in portrait photography.
Here is the jpg Straight Out Of the Camera (SOOC):
Here’s another version of the photo, this was a RAW file exposed manually in Rawtherapee. Unfortunately it’s a little too green. I’ll need to edit again.
Too centered = Basic
I took this portrait thinking of the composition, in particular getting the ornament in the middle of the ice rink in (the ice rink in Umekita Hiroba is actually made of plastic). But, doing so I forgot about the rule of thirds and put Mao right smack in the middle. This makes the photo a little too basic.
Back lighting in the hair
Notice the back lighting in Mao’s hair on this shot. It’s a great photo technique… that I was completely unaware of taking this shot. Complete fluke. It was after this shot that I started learning about taking shots into the sunlight or other lights.
I could have given Mao some more direction with her hands too. Hands are something I didn’t notice portraits during this photo shoot, but hopefully I’ve learned my lesson. There is so much to be aware of when taking portraits.
Too Much Rail
In this shot I could have moved to a better position to avoid the rail and have a more pure background. I like Mao’s smile in this one.
Get Higher
I needed to get higher on this shot. Too much rail and not enough focus on Mao. It may have been better to use the rails as leading lines.I didn’t think of putting Mao between the rails. Things to try next time.
In close and using the rail
I didn’t pay attention to hand placement, so it was recommended that I crop in a bit closer for this shot. I could have used the rail more as a leading line too.
Here is the original shot straight out of the camera:
