Growing up I always thought my father knew everything. To me, he always seemed to have the correct answers to the most difficult of questions. Of course, now that I’m older, I understand that my father doesn’t know everything but his general knowledge is still exceptional. Recently, I had a conversation with him regarding dementia. I appreciate this isn’t the most cheerful of conversations to have, but, one thing my father firmly believes is by keeping the brain active, more so in your senior years, you reduce the chances of developing a progressive neurological disorder. How true this is I don’t know, but, when I asked him how he does this, his response was “I read…..a lot”. I knew my father was an avid reader but once we had delved into the discussion further, I then realised how much of a ‘bibliophile’ he actually was. It was then I realised why my father knew so much. The books weren’t only keeping his brain active, but, constantly feeding it with information.
As I wanted the theme of ‘literature’ to be evident within the image and ultimately have this relate to the sitter in question – my father – I thought the simplest way to portray this would be to have him stand in front of a bookshelf. When considering the composition, I felt a portrait showing the full length of the body wouldn’t be suitable as there were too many distractions on either side. These distractions, I believed, would perhaps lead to misinterpretation by the viewer. Instead, I opted for a ‘tighter’ composition that meant I had to carefully consider the placement of the subject. As I wanted as many of the books in the background to be visible, I had to place my father to the side of the frame. When first viewing the image, my eyes are immediately drawn to the books on the left. However, I found that each row acts as a leading line to the main subject which, I must admit, was unintentional but I think works well. Though, I wanted to allow the viewer to have some insight into some of the genres my father is interested in, I purposely chose a wide aperture to blur out some of the written information on the books. By doing so, I think I have left some ambiguity as to what relation this man has with these books. For example, is he an author of one of them?
At the time of shooting, the lighting in the room was particularly bad. As I didn’t have an external flash, I needed to use a table lamp to illuminate my father’s face. Though, it did help increase the highlights, it was far too harsh and produced heavy shadows on both his face and neck and on the bookshelf itself. I were to take this portrait again, I would most certainly use an external flash with the bounce card to create a more even and less harsh effect.
Iain Barbour - BA (Hons) Photography 