Portrait Competition

I'll admit it - portraits are NOT my cup of tea. I'm not very good at them and I feel awkward asking people to pose, so I tend to take grab shots only and those are tough to compose well.

This week the NYIP photo challenge is offering a free t-shirt and a chance for your image to appear in one of their excellent a educational podcasts, but the theme is... you guessed it.... portraits. Now, with landscapes I would have been straight in there, but I was struggling with portraits. On looking through my portfolio, I found this one that I had completely forgotten about. as i said, I tend to go for grab shots and so, without the planning and preperation that goes with a landscape image, my portraits tend to slip out of my consciousness rapidly. However, I think I did a good job of this one. This is my (at the time) 6 year old daughter practicing on the piano while my parents-in-law listened and enjoyed the candles on the Christmas tree. I tried to make this a timeless image by converting to black and white and hiding the existing noise from the high ISO exposure by adding to it with more, to make it grainy and just that little bit less modern. I used the keyboard as the anchor of the image and as a lead in line . The way the light fell on the keyboard lets the eye be grabbed by a bright band of light taking you to my dughters hands. From there the reflection of the trees candles on the black keye gives an interesting contrast and leads you through the room and past my parents-in-law (in soft focus - and with their backs to us as they contemplate the tree - they are there for mood and context, not to be the subject) and on to the distinctive but out of focus tree. The idea here is that the viewer appreciates my daughter playing piano as the subject, but the context of a tranquil Christmas period is evident from the grandparents standing close together, and the glow from the tree in the dim lighting. The three key elements necessary to tell this story are practically all that is visible, each element is appropriately exposed and there is little else to distract the eye. altogether I think this was very successful - we shall see what the judges at NYIP say... Have a look at the other entries too, some are of an exceptionally high standard when you consider that all of us there are students on a journey from the basics to becoming better photographers.

Just for completeness, here is another image that I "grabbed" at last years festival. Unfortunately I can't enter it in any competitions or sell the image as I don't have a model release form. This is a very pretty girl who could not have looked more pensive. It was about 5pm on the last day of the 2008 Edinburgh Festival and I would bet that she is a dancer in one of the shows (after all she was wearing leg warmers Sherlock) - she looked utterly dejected and alone, possibly sad that the excitement of the last few weeks was coming to an end. I was scanning the milling crowds for a good image and my lens happenned to alight on her just as the sun came out for a few seconds and illuminated her perfectly. I reeled off a couple of snaps so that I would not miss the chance and then was able to wait a few seconds without her noticing me till I was able to get this image with all the people crowded round her but passing her by with their backs to her. This really accentuated the mood and makes the image in my opinion.

If you would like to see anymore of my Fringe Festival images, please have a browse at my PBase Fringe gallery. I wonder what this years will bring.

My conclusion from these two images, my two most successful "portraits", is that a portrait must tell a story or evoke an emotion - I see so many portraits of cute kids and beautiful girls but so often, they are just "record" shots, posed and perfect and essentially boooooringggg. For me a good portrait is almost a foray into photo journalism. We shall see if I have the courage to take the final step into that most risky and scary of all photography genres...