Balance

So now that it's finally the start of a new semester I'm anxious to get going with my portraiture, however no matter how excited I get to start I continue to feel apprehensive about actually grabbing whoever I need and picking up my camera. Obviously the start of class critiques will force me to jump into my work regardless of my apprehension; but what is really holding me back, despite my countless hours of preparation in terms of research, is the question of BALANCE.

The more I think about how I want to portray my subjects, the more I find myself scared to cross the lines between honest portraiture, over-pretentious glamour shots, and boring/already been done pictures of a person. I, more than anything, want to capture the most honest portrait possible when shooting my subjects, and I know I'm capable of catching that moment; but in my constant search for inspiration I always manage to find, more often then not, silly attempts at serious portraits and over-serious photos of a subject who isn't serious at all.

My goal this year is to portray my subjects in a way that accentuates their most unique characteristics, the things I find most beautiful about them. I'm terrified, though, that I won't be able to keep the balance between a simple portrait displaying the beauty of my subject and a lame attempt at isolating the things I want portrayed. I want to be more focused on my subject and who they are then what I'm doing with the light or how I'm holding my camera, which is why I don't plan on using the studio at all this semester. I'm hoping that by using my own locations and not having total control over my environment I can worry less about what the environment is doing and more how it's affecting my subject.

My struggle, I know, will be keeping it simple and making sure I know what I want from my subjects. I think the more prepared I am going into my sessions and the more knowledgeable I am about the tools I'm using, the better my photos will be and I really hope I can do justice to the beautiful ladies I will be photographing.

Hadley

So a while back I said I was going to do another photo shoot with my friend Hadley with softer lighting and outside of the studio. These are the photos from that shoot. I actually had no idea where I was going to photograph her up until hours before the shoot, but I knew exactly what feel I wanted. A few hours before our meet-up time I remembered a place I found on campus that had beautiful natural lighting. It was an all wooden stairwell with huge windows, perfect for the effect I wanted, so without haste I grabbed everything I needed and headed there. The shoot couldn't have gone better, it was a great space, and she was, once again, a great model, who I will most likely be working with more this coming semester. This was actually one of my best photo shoots to date and I'm very proud of what photos came out of this, it really boosted my confidence and helped me realize that I really could get a good portrait that was about the person and not solely technical. So here they are, then.

Springtime Catch Up

Alrighty, soooo I've slacked. A lot. lol. This is basically a little catch up on what I got up to after spring break. Honestly... there wasn't much going on in terms of photography. I was really involved with a huge show that our school puts on every year called International Gala and photography kind of took a backseat. Or rather, I should say my portraiture took a backseat... there was a lot of photography involved in the show haha. Anywho, back to what this blog is all about. I think I'll post these photos on separate posts since I think each category at least deserves that much considering it is now the middle of summer.

I ended the year learning a lot about what I like and don't like about portraiture. Even though I went through one of the biggest artists blocks I've seen in a while I ended up with some good material, one photo shoot in particular was the best I'd had the entire year. I also realized that I suck at photographing guys. That's something I really want to work on this coming year because I won't be able to grow as a photographer staying within my comfort zone and just photographing girls, even though I find them way more photogenic. That is another thing I want to work on next year, getting out of my comfort zone. I have a lot of ideas about how to go about doing that, but I also need a lot of guidance because I find it's a very thin line between portraits that I think are unique and genuine and portraits that are cliche and over the top. I've been constantly looking at photographers online and doing research, filing photos away for inspiration. I haven't really been doing much this summer in terms of photography and it's hard to explain why not. I guess it's mostly because I don't like where I live and it's hard to photograph my friends here since they don't see me as a studio photographer. That's not much of an excuse though, soooo I worked on it a bit this past weekend and got some good photos. I will post those when I get the chance.

So without further ado: the spring

Portrait Inspiration

I adore this portrait of Evelyn Nesbit by Gertrude Kasebier. Like I said, I've been doing a lot of portraiture research and one of the people I came across and fell in love with was her. I recently visited UCF, the first FL college campus I had ever visited btw, and I spent a good deal of time in the library looking at portraiture books (lol I know I'm such a photo nerd...) But while I looked I found myself engrossed in one particular book called Karsh: The Art of the Portrait. pretty straightforward, but it was pretty much the answer to every question I had about portraiture (aside from the answers Frank gave me) and I wrote down a couple of other photographers mentioned that I liked, including Gertrude.

Anyways, this portrait is pretty much the epitome of what I want from my portraits. The woman is relaxed and not playing for the camera. She is letting down her public mask. She seems tired, but it is known that she is tired by her expression. You can tell she is comfortable because of her slouching position, but it is also inviting, as if she is used to using her body to invite others in. She is young, but seems experience. So much you can tell from this portrait, that is what I want from mine. Hopefully I can find a way to get this out of my models. For now, I'll just keep researching until I can get back into the studio.

Portraiture

So, on the note of going in a different direction from the dancing photographs, I think I'm going to solely focus on portraiture the rest of the semester. I really want to get a better grip on lighting since it seems that my biggest weaknesses in my photos are shadows and emphasis. I'm still getting the hang of paying attention to every part of the photograph when I'm constructing it, but I'm getting there. These are some portraits I made of my friend Hadley, I was focusing on using a harder spotlight to create a dramatic feel. The last two photos are a much softer light; I'll be working with her again using the softer light again, but probably not in the studio. I'll also be taking photos of her best friend, Humza, (who I photographed for the eye project) in the studio. Aside from that I plan on taking candid photos of Humza in our Academic Commons and probably of Hadley as well since many times she is with him. I have many ideas about how I want to approach both of these angles of portraiture and I've been really researching the idea of portraiture, especially the work of Yousuf Karsh, who Frank told me about; so lets see how they work out and how much I can actually get done with the remainder of the semester seemingly flying by.

Dance

This semester I started out with an elaborate plan to photograph dancers. I got the idea after taking some black and white silhouette photographs of my friend Hadley in dance-like poses for our painting class. I fully researched it, looking at different dance photographers, different lighting techniques, and poured over many, many dance photos. I found this photographer, Ed Flores, who does dance photography EXACTLY how I wanted to capture it, it was just a matter of getting people, places, and clothing... So, I had some of my dancer friends lined up, first was one of my suite-mates, and I had everything figured out, or so I thought. I did actually START the project. I got Lex in the studio, then after talking to Stephen about different spaces, I took her out of the studio... and that's kind of where it tapered off. It's not that I didn't like what I was doing, it's more that I didn't have the same fire for it that I did for the eye project. I do want to keep working on the dance thing because I didn't get anywhere close to where I wanted to be with my photos so far, but as a break I think I will be going in a different direction with the rest of the semester in terms of portraiture. I will get to that in another post, but for now, here is the development of the dance photos so far... mind you, they aren't even CLOSE to what I had envisioned originally; and hopefully they will get closer in the future if I decide to come back to it.

Self Portraits

As a continuous side project I do a lot of self portraiture. They say there is no better model than yourself, you are always available! and I agree with that full heartedly. Whenever I need a break from working on whatever, I love to break out some self portraits, they are like my little vacation. I do them often, and I like to make them as different as possible from what I'm doing at the time, often edgy and whimsical to make them as fun as they can be. This is a set of self portraits I've done over the past couple semesters including some from my first photo class, taken with my 35 mm film camera and some done in my first and second drawing classes as well as my painting class.

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Eyes Project

Since this blog's intent was to show Frank things we were working on outside of our critiqued work I tried not to upload any of the work I was working on for class and perfecting. These are all of my favorites from my Eyes project I did last semester. This was definitely my favorite project I've taken on to this date and I hope to find something as exciting for me in the future since right now I'm in a bit of a slump.

Lex

Whitney

Humza

Molly

Samantha

I'd like to continue this project as I get better as a photographer, maybe do some more blue eyes, I have a lot of green, lol, but this is definitely something I can see myself working on again.