Choir portraits

[LocalHero1953]

Hi
I have been a photographer since a child (a good many years ago), but have rarely shot portraits until recent times. I have spent the last couple of years teaching myself with the help, among other resources, of Colin's school of portraiture threads. It is now time for me to stick my head above the parapet and get some serious C&C.

I am a member of a local choir and offered a donation to choir funds for everyone who was willing to act as my model. The plan was that I would shoot them doing something they like doing, or with something that they are particularly attached to, and the shoot would be at their home, place of work, or anywhere that came to mind indoors or out. I spent some time with a friend of my daughter, a professional photographer in the London entertainment scene; she taught me some lighting basics, and www.strobist.com helped with the rest. I have used flash sometimes (1 or 2, off camera, often with brollies), but not always.

Most of the time I have not tried to be flattering (and the subjects accepted this!), but to capture something about their character. Often I have included a musical "clue" in the frame - it is a choir, after all.

Here are three together, just to show the sort of thing I aim for. If I post others, I'll do them individually. All taken with a Leica M9.

Cricketer & music director
My first model.
(Lens: 35mm, f/5.6)


Fenland midwife and soprano
(Lens: 90mm, f/5.6)
My second model, on a bitterly cold day.
Perhaps too much fill-in flash? And I had to clone a wind turbine from the top of her head - doh!


Mother-to-be and alto
(Lens: 90mm, f/2)
Sadly, just out of focus on the eyes.


You can see all my portraits here: http://www.paulashleyphotography.co....ion/the-choir/
But I'll post others here in due course if there seems to be enough interest - I need the C&C

[Werner]

Hi Paul.
Just a few thoughts concerning No.1:
The combination cricket and musik could be more pronounced.
The model doesn't look too happy with either sports or art.
You might as well think of lighting - in this image the light is harsh and frontal. Unless you want it that way it's rarely a good choice.
The shelf with all that clutter in it doesn't do anything (good) for the picture.
Hope that helps a bit

[chauncey]

A couple of things...I am not a fan of portraits shot with a 35mm lens due to distortion as shown
in the first image with the outsized hands and knees. Nor am I excited about cluttered backgrounds.
Are stoic expressions a requirement for choir members?
#3 is the best of the series shown here.

[LocalHero1953]

Chauncey: no 3. Well it was difficult to go wrong with a model like her

Expressions: part of the learning curve, I guess. As a starting point, I asked the subjects not to smile, in order to avoid "camera expressions", though for some of them it was tough - they smile naturally - and I got some unnatural responses. The music director can indeed be a fierce character, and other members who saw this appreciated his expression. The midwife is the opposite; if it hadn't been so cold, this would have been a very unnatural expression for her, but we were both having difficulty in that wind.

I've seen some good portraits with wide angles, but I agree it is an effect that is better for being sparingly used, and I don't use it usually. I'd be interested in other opinions about this. I quite like the big cricket pads.

Werner and Chauncey both: I agree, I don't think I have got the background right. It is both too cluttered and doesn't highlight the musical aspect enough. I think this is also related to the lighting, which illuminates the whole scene. In other portraits where I used artificial lighting, I tried harder to get it to illuminate only those things that were important, but not always successfully.

Werner: I did want harsh and near frontal lighting, but not quite as much as I ended up with. I was struggling with placing lights in a small room.

Thanks very much for your comments!

[Manfred M]

I think that you have done a nice job on all three portraits, so let me give you my thoughts.

The first two are "environmental portraits", and the third one has more of a formal studio look with classical Rembrandt lighting.

Image 1 - I will have to agree with the others, your choice of focal length is not working as well as it might and neither is the angle you are shooting at. Both the compression from using a wide angle lens and the shot from below accentuate the equipment rather than the person. I'm also not quite sure about the background - it just seems a bit too busy for my liking. My eyes are drawn to the piano, the books on the book shelf, the music stand and of course the white wall. Choosing one tonal background would have worked better in my opinion.

Image 2 - I think this one confuses me a bit. I'm not sure you need all that headroom and space on the right. It looks more like a snapshot than a portrait. I find that the background is too light versus your subject and wonder if underexposing the background by a couple of stops and using the flash to light your subject with a proper exposure might not have worked better. I'm thinking of the technique that the photographer Joey L has almost turned into his signature.

http://www.joeyl.com/personal-galler...le-of-mankind/

I'm also wondering about the crop on the bottom; somehow the place you have cut the image looks a bit awkward; missing the hands and arms.

Image 3 - I don't know about the softness of the eyes as I can't tell with the smallish image here. I tend to shoot with centre focus point, focus on the eye closest to the camera and then recompoise for portraints. You have to get the eye(s) sharp. Looking at the eyes, your model's head is pointed away from you, but her eyes are turned towards you. This makes her eyse look a tad strange, with a lot of white on one side and virtually none on the other. Had you gotten her to look straight ahead, I think you would have had a stronger composition.

As I said in my intro, nice Rembrandt lightinig, but I find your lighting ratio a tiny bit too harsh for a woman, especially a mother-to-be; where softness might be a better approach. I white reflector pushing a bit more light into her face might work better. I also think you might want a hair light / kicker light from the back. You have very nice and clean definition from the front, but the hair and body fade into the background too much on the left side. Lighting from there would give you a cleaner, well defined edge.

[LocalHero1953]

Thank you Manfred, all very helpful comments.

Image 1. As I said in my earlier post, I agree that the lighting and busyness of the background is not satisfactory. I shall have to think harder about it. "Setting the stage" is something I need to put more effort into. I'm still not convinced the wide angle approach is wrong, but as two people at least have commented on it, I'll have a rethink!

Image 2. Sadly, I think you're right about space, composition, and about cropping at the bottom. With the lighting, I was trying to get some off camera fill and brightness (it was a very dull day), but I think I overdid it. If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting I use flash to provide the main light, and so get greater contrast between subject and background? Joey L seemed, at a quick look, to have less contrast, but I'll look at his pages again.

Image 3. She was sitting on a chapel pew, and I was shooting along the line of the bench as she turned towards me. I had one flash with a brolly fairly close to her face. I wanted to highlight her "bump", but the brolly light wouldn't do it on its own (edit: the black dress swallowed the light), so I used a second flash with a snoot. This left me without a spare flash that would have been useful to provide a bit of fill (or a hair light) The result was a bit contrasty, and there was a limit to how far I could recover it in PP. I hadn't thought of reflectors at that stage (more to learn).

Focus: the Leica is manual, of course, and this shot (and a couple of others) alerted me to a rangefinder miscalibration, now sorted.

[Manfred M]

The Leica M was never really designed to be a portrait camera; which is why I shot a Leica R for decades (actually two of them). Give yourself enough DoF and you can get away with it

I looked at the M (kind of wish I had bought it now), but felt that SLR was more the route I would need (correct assumption as things turned out).

Two flashes are going to limit you; but try using a reflector from the front, rather than a flash. My first reflector was a piece of white Core-Plast I found kicking around the house and my second one a piece of white foam-core, the back side of a project board one of my daughters had used for a school project. They make a really inexpensive third light and you can try your snoot as a hair light.