Photography 1. People and Places: Exercise: Portrait. Scale and Setting.

Exercise: Portrait-scale and setting.

For this exercise I photographed my wife in her favourite chair. The chair sits in the corner of our family room and is next to a source of natural light coming from the left of the pictures. It is a position from which the south facing garden can be seen and which has the best natural light. As this was a dull winter day I employed a single light umbrella to the right of the picture.

These are pictures of a woman in retirement enjoying her time reading. I did not intend them to be flattering but I hope I have her captured her sense of fun.

The first is,as asked, a close cropped shot of her face. I got Sue to smile by telling her that the earlier shots made her look like a granny. Rather cruel but it got the laugh I was looking for. There are, however, no reference points to show where this was taken.

The whole face is laughing. This is not just a forced, “Smile for the camera”, smile but a full on happy face. The mouth is pulled strongly back and the eyes are almost pulled shut. A Happy Granny.

The second is of the upper torso and starts to give some information about what the sitter is doing. An i-pad can be seen clearly in her hands intimating the use of modern technology and her use of it in a recreational setting. The angle of the head gives a relaxed feel to the shot, and again there is no falseness in the smile.

In this shot the face is still the central feature but now other features start to intrude. The strong pattern of her top, her jewelry, and, more distractingly, the plant apparently poking her in the ear.

The third shot is of the whole torso and brings other elements of the setting into view. It can now be seen, quite clearly, that this is the corner of a room and there is now a hint of furniture. The edge of a picture can be seen. I have now moved the plant out to the left of the picture so that it is no longer as intrusive as it was. The sitters striped top became a strong feature in the picture, so to ensure that the face remained the main element I made a rather personal, but unrepeatable, remark that again brought on the required smile. The relaxed posture hints a someone happy with her lot. This smile draws the viewer to the face. The action of the sitter is now clear and the setting is becoming clearer.

The last is the full length shot and shows more of the setting. The presence of the batik hints at an appreciation of the good things in life, whilst the red slippers show that this is a person at home in their own space not troubled by the demands of fashion. The focus is still on the face but this picture gives much more information about the sitter than the first close cropped shot. This time the look seems to be asking how many more shot am going to take and when can she get back to her book.