First post ever - Portrait at Arts Centre

[Sannah]

Hi All,
I am very new to this, and really not sure if I am doing it right (the posting and the photography!), but thought I would just dive right in and give it a go.
I have only just started getting serious with my photography (and taken the settings off automatic) and would love some feedback. I know I am meant to ask specific questions, but I am really not sure what questions to ask?



Thanks in advance!!

f/32
exposure 1/200 sec
ISO - 800
Canon EOS 1000D
Focal length 155mm

[MattG]

Good luck with the journey that is photography. It is a lot of fun and frankly, you don't need to care about what I or others say if you don't like it. It is purely opinion and therefore should be treated as such. In saying that, I will try to give some constructive feedback and criticism to get you started.

As you took the settings off automatic, the questions I will answer are:

1. A wider aperture at that focal length would have put the building at the back further out of focus - you could have raised the shutter speed, dropped the ISO to achieve this.
2. The composition could be stronger - the positioning of your subject in the lower right quadrant with negative space above him, building in the upper left quadrant and darker foreground element with no context in the lower left don't help isolate your subject or place him in a grounded context that can lift the image to one more powerful. This can be overcome to a degree in post processing by cropping to the subject.
3. Obviously this was a challenging time of day to shoot (presumably from shadows this is around noon), so exposure is good for all that. The eyes closed against the sun means you lose some of the emotional impact of the image though. Perhaps putting the sun behind your subject and preferably finding some constant shade to expose him in would help this.

I hope this is what you were looking to find, if not, then please feel free to ignore!

[simmijoe]

Wish you a good luck for your photography career. Professional photography is a lucrative career.There are many event photographers who covers marriages, various big functions, seminars etc. Negligence and apathy won’t take you far in this profession. It requires that the photographer be prepared with his camera and other necessary equipment well before the beginning of the occasion.

[jenniferpeel96]

Yes, Simi Joe- If Photography is your passion, we should go for it. If you want to be a journalistic photographer, a degree in journalism would open doors for you.
----------
new york maternity photography

[graciousness]

Originally Posted by simmijoe

Wish you a good luck for your photography career. Professional photography is a lucrative career.There are many event photographers who covers marriages, various big functions, seminars etc. Negligence and apathy won’t take you far in this profession. It requires that the photographer be prepared with his camera and other necessary equipment well before the beginning of the occasion.

Originally Posted by jenniferpeel96

Yes, Simi Joe- If Photography is your passion, we should go for it. If you want to be a journalistic photographer, a degree in journalism would open doors for you.
----------
new york maternity photography

Amazing. You created two accounts just to spam this forum. Either spambots are getting more 'intelligent' or you humanbots think we're stupid. Either way, you can't get rid of your rotten pork stink.

[graciousness]

By the way, +1 to what Matt said.

Seeing that it was such a bright day, it was not necessary to have used such a high ISO for this shoot. I am going to assume that you raised your ISO because you had set your aperture (f stop) so narrow (f/32) that you had compensate exposure with the high ISO. As Matt pointed out, you want to blur the background to pop your subject more.

Also, be careful with taking photos with buildings. You will notice that the buildigns in the background is leaning; this is caused by lens distortion (tons of info you can find on google on this). This is easy enough to fix in Photoshop, though, as the distortion is simple. Or you can crop on tighter on him, thereby removing as much of the building as possible.

So with the advice given so far:

- when taking portraits, first thing you want to set up and think about is your aperture (fstop). You want to use the lowest f/stop you can use so that you can get a nice depth of field that blurs out the background to make your subject/s pop out more.

- Focus on the eyes. This is the most important aspect in portraiture. In this photo, his eyes are closed by easily fixed by taking his photo with him not facing the sun.

- Set your ISO as low as possible to avoid noise (unless you want that noise or grain in the image);

- if the subject is moving, your shutter speed will matter so you want to use fast shutter speed to avoid motion blur. If you have to raise your ISO to get in more exposure if you have to use shutter speed higher than 1/60th, then do so.

So that's it. Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Grace