Portrait Project Evaluation

Throughout this project I have learnt a variety of new techniques and skills that are focused on portraiture. For example, I have learnt how to set up a range of new equipment including, the location lighting kit and a Nikon D610. This equipment has worked really well with this portrait project because it has created a striking atmosphere, which creates a vivid focal point for the viewers.

This project was something new for me an opportunity to explore this approach in depth, by researching some theory around the subject. I found this really interesting because many portrait photographers had unique opinions on what the figure means to them. For example john Tagg expresses his opinion as “The portrait is…a sign whose purpose is both the description of an individual and the inscription of social identity”. I believe that this suggests that a person’s social aspects can be identified through a portrait, by a variety of facial and body expressions. The theory process in this project was defiantly a lot stronger for me because I found reading up on this approach really intriguing. The subject that I chose to take portraits of was an amateur dramatic group. I chose this group because I thought that they would be interesting to photograph, both natural and acting. The approach that I chose was to capture both natural and performance portraits of each actor. However, I found that the final results weren’t what I wanted because some of the performance portraits were out of focus from the movement. I then talked to my tutor and we discussed that there wasn’t much difference between the natural photographs and acting photographs. I agreed with this too and just decided to go back and just capture natural photographs as these were working much better. Also I felt that the group could still be identified as an amateur dramatic group through the spot light lighting and through the red curtain in the background.

Overall, I believe that this project was one of my best because I thought that I worked well with capturing portraits in a unique way. My strengths within this project were defiantly working with the location lighting kit to create a striking spot light. Also I felt that another strength of mine was working with people I didn’t know because I was able to make them feel relaxed and confident, which is shown in the portraits. However, an improvement that could be made is with understanding the camera controls in more depth so that the set up time for a shoot could be quicker.

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