READING: Blogger Portraits

I enjoyed seeing these Voyeuristic Blogger Portraits on WIRED.com. For me, there is something very calming about seeing people zoning out inside their private spaces while bathed in gentle LCD lighting. Some of them look almost religiously transcendent. Do you react the same way to seeing them? What's your opinion?

Examples: Vanity Fair 2010

So I was doing a bit of random browsing as a means of procrastinating writing this college supplement essay of mine, and I stumbled upon this and this. They're a two-part recap of some portrait photos featured in Vanity Fair over the course 2010, and I think they're all pretty cool.

You all might recognize some of the photographers (ie: Anne Leibovitz).

EXAMPLE: Superhero Grandma

I found this on Gizmodo about an elderly grandmother who was depressed and lonely. As a result her grandson/photographer took her on a photoshoot. She was actually a hero. During WWII she helped save 10 Jews and as a result had to illegally leave Hungary to avoid persecution. Anyway, enjoy!

READING: Photographing Autism

Here's a short NY Times article about a father and son who use photography to build bonds between them and document the boys autism. The story and the photos are touching. Some readers left comments saying that the father is exploiting the condition of his son by publishing these photos and a book. What do you think?

READING: Reach Out and Touch Someone

Here's an interesting idea for a project from Richard Renaldi... having strangers touch for the sake of a photograph. What do you think of the idea as a photographer? as a subject? as a viewer?

Could this idea work at Menlo? What people or groups would you choose to have touch for the camera?

EXAMPLE: "Cuba Gallery"- Portraiture

This year, I've been telling myself to try and work more on people-photos whenever the opportunity presents itself, because last year a very large majority of my work consisted of closeup, often abstract photos of objects that often involved small depth-of-field and vivid colors and textures. That is all fine and good, but it gets old after a while, and so I decided that people would be an interesting topic to branch out to, because they show emotion- unlike rulers and grass- and are very grounded and physical.

I recently found a great group of photos on Flickr by a user identified as "Cuba Gallery."
They tend to portray subjects who fill a good amount of the frame, and who are usually looking very pensive. They also all have a very interesting vintage faded look that is oh-so-popular among hipsters. Quite cool stuff.

The gallery: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=portrait&w=36587311%40N08

Sample photos below:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/4800429125/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/3391067011/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/4242142819/

EXAMPLE: Creative Portrait Ideas

I noticed a couple of interesting ideas for portraits that you could try to use or adapt.

TV show advertisement featuring 2 faces, though the same face shown in this way might be even more interesting.

Separate closeups arranged in the shape of the body.

Here's the concept in the form of a diagram.

Use of a Lens Baby to shift/tilt focus as shown in this example from Craig Tanner's Light Diary.

Chuck Close style close up and symmetric lighting with very shallow depth of field.

Nice example by Ela Hawes using multiple exposure and moody, dramatic lighting on the face. Most likely this was assembled from multiple images in Photoshop. 

PROJECT 1: Digital (RAW)

For this project I decided to photograph portraits in (RAW) format. I think that portraits are a good way to show people at their best, and I tried to bring that out in my photos. Overall, I think that people believe that portraits are easy to shoot because you're just taking a picture of someone's face. But it is a lot harder than that, you need good lighting, the person needs to feel comfortable, and you need to position the person in the portrait where they are the main focus of the picture. I tried to use all of these points to make my photos concentrate on the people in them. I found a Group of homeless guys, who were happy with what they had, and were just hanging out. They were more than happy for me to take their picture. This specific guy (Jack) by far had the most character with his beard, and the wrinkles and cuts on his face. Overall i wanted to do something abnormal to break the barrier of portraits.

READING: Self Portraits in the Social Networking Age

Some interesting results about which portraits are considered most successful for social networking uses are described in this NY Times article. Don't forget to smile!