Portrait Photography: Evaluation

Black and White Exhibition Print

It sounds like a terrible cliché thing to say, but Level 5 Portrait been a real roller-coaster of an assignment from the start. Portraits are perceived by many as being one of the easiest parts of photography to get good at with very little experience, as long as you have a good eye or a nice subject. That in lies the problem with it for me, the things that are made to look so easy and simple by good photographers are usually nothing of the sort. So my main aim with both sets of images was to keep the subjects quite natural and un posed in an environment that added subtle context rather than dominate the composition.

Black and White 2

The first set of images were taken of construction workers on a building site in Teesside over several visits. Having worked extensively on sites just like this I felt I would be able to use this to my advantage.  

Taking the 5x4 onto a live building site felt good at the time but the first results were disappointing. Trying to cut corners and not heat up the development tank and rather leave them in longer to compensate proved costly as the negatives never really had any punchy contrast to give the prints any real character. Properly processed negatives and a wider angle lens on the second trip gave much better results, This kept more in line with the feel of Ian Macdonalds workplace portraits that heavily influenced me. There are so many elements needed to get good results when using a 5x4 field camera I'm almost embarrassed at my short comings with using a DSLR. After receiving quite a good response from the editorial assignment I had high expectations of the work I would be able to produce in large format. 

Black and White 3

 For the second set of portraits using the colour film I split my efforts into two different sub projects, day time and night time themed portrait sessions. The day time started inside my own house focusing mainly at the way my family chose to relax and the spaces they spent most of their leisure time. The night time shoots were based upon a set of portraits I had already done several times with a digital camera,  In clubs while covering the events commercially.  Both of these ideas never made it through the full process from start to finish but for totally different reasons. It seemed just a little too easy to take photos in my house, I didn't really feel there was much being said in the images about them, other than just this is what they look like and this is where they sit.

I had been looking forward to using the colour darkroom since we first went into have a look around it last year. The no light at all situation (compared to the black and white) was, and still is a challenge but I feel it has got easier to do as long as a bit more planning is in place before you head in.

 Despite shooting regularly in the nightclub environment with a digital camera I still have a lot to learn in getting the images I want from a film camera set up. The extremes like 1 second exposures, high ISO and rear curtain sync flash do not transfer directly into the natural portrait look I was hoping for. I think it could even have been a handicap to try and go into these shoots with that experience of digital. It gave me a false impression of the steps needed and process required to get good results. Rather disappointingly, all of the rolls of film shot at night were deemed unusable for the same reason, the exposure levels were too low to get a good standard of print. With the shortage of paper I chose to concentrate on the last film I shot in the park..

Dog Walker 1

Dog walkers in the park should have been a safe back up if all else had failed, However on the day I went to shoot snow had fallen. This was the first time i had the chance to take any photographs in these conditions. So,again my inexperience has produced results that i am not entirely happy with. Underexposed,and after discussing it with Antony while printing I understand why when shots that were taken at the same time with my digital camera have fared better. When we get some more paper in im going to see if i can get better results from scanned negatives.

Dog Walker 2

So to sum it up like I said at the start its been quite challenging in new ways that can only help in the long run, however I would be lying if I said I am happy with all of the end results.

Dog Walker 3