My biggest fear surrounding this assignment was the fact I had to ask people to take their portrait. Before starting the process, I kept thinking to myself, “How many times has someone approached me and asked that, and if they did, what would I say?” The answer was “never” and most likely “No”. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy taking pictures of strangers’, but these are always done candidly. To ask someone seems strange, an annoyance for them, or perhaps even worse, an invasion of their privacy. Ultimately, these people didn’t know who I really was or what I would do with their photograph, but yet they trusted me enough to allow me snap away.
The brief for this assignment states, “leaving technical photographic considerations aside…” To be honest, I wasn’t sure if this meant I was being advised to only focus on the involvement with my subjects’, and to disregard any photographic technical abilities I have. If my understanding was correct, I understood to a certain degree the point that was trying to be made. However, surely the basic technical aspects of photography, for example, exposure, shutter speed etc. cannot merely be ignored and the quality of my images’ potentially becoming jeopardised for the sake of trying to build relationships. I found though that with the experience and technical skills I already possessed, I was working on ‘default’ mode, so to speak, and very rarely had to consider the technical aspects during the photographic process. Prior to the shoot, I set my camera’s ISO to 400, selected ‘aperture priority’ mode and dialled in an aperture of f5.6, as I knew I wouldn’t require a shallow depth of field. Also, as it was predetermined that I would be taking full body portraits, I understood this would help keep all of my subjects’ in focus. I didn’t have to worry about the camera’s shutter speed, due to the shooting modes selected, and because there was enough light available, there was minimal chance of producing out of focus images’. One thing I noticed I was doing frequently at the beginning, was selecting various focal lengths from my 18-35mm lens. A good example of this would be the portrait of ‘Andy and Patricia’. It’s obvious that the field of view in this image is wider than the rest in the series, however, I don’t feel it weakens it at all and deserves to be in the final selection, albeit, with minor differences to the framing. I also noticed when using this method that the process took longer than initially planned, and it was noticeable at times that the subjects’ were becoming agitated. To combat this, and to have the rest of my portraits’ consistent with each other, I selected a fixed focal length of 35mm and simply used my legs to find my desired focal length. I chose what could be considered as a more ‘traditional’ composition, placing my subjects’ in the centre of the frame. I found this works best when creating full body portraits and is a technique the likes of Niall McDiarmid uses regularly.
I found that with every new stranger I spoke to, my confidence grew, and as a result the quality of my portraits’ improved dramatically. I began to give my subjects’ some ‘direction’ and I found the whole process became more enjoyable for both myself and them. It’s no surprise that the portrait’s I feel are the strongest, happen to have been taken near the end of the process, which to me proves that the more you do something, the better you will become. Though, I’m happy with the portraits’ I’ve taken and feel I’ve achieved what I set out to do, what I’m most satisfied with is the confidence I’ve gained through this experience and have been inspired to start a personal portrait project in the near future.
I must admit there wasn’t much creativity involved when photographing my subjects’. The process was incredibly simple and at no point did I want to become experimental with my ideas. Reflecting back to Niall McDiarmid’s work, though very good, it also seems simple in terms of his execution when creating a portrait. I believe the type of image you are trying to produce will determine how experimental you may become, but if the context is correct, sometimes simplicity is all that’s needed to make a strong image.
Iain Barbour - BA (Hons) Photography 