Portraits

Who doesn't love having their picture taken? I feel as if the quote under the title of my blog fits perfectly for this blog. "When you photograph people in color you photograph their clothes.  But when you photograph people in black and white you photograph their souls."  I feel that this is very true because when you photograph anything in black and white, you are looking at the subject matter itself, rather in color there is so much more going on.  Looking at a black and white photograph can really draw you in and make you feel a different way.  Below I provided an example of the same picture--one in black and white, the other being in color. 

I feel that the picture on the left becomes too distracting because of all the different colors going on but when looking at the picture on the right you can really feel the emotion coming from her. For me it is very difficult to take portraits because it is so hard to capture that look in a person's eye to draw you in wanting to know more about them.  I found though that a simple switch from color to black and white almost does that justice.  I provided a link below that I came across the other day that I found very helpful in shooting photography, I hope that you also can find it helpful. 

Helpful Hints

Traveling:

Who loves to travel?--I know I sure do! My favorite traveling experience was when my friends and I went to Puerto Rico for an entire week during spring break last year.  It was my first time experiencing a different culture and a way of life. At first it was very difficult to adapt because I did not know any Spanish. After a few days I picked up on a few key words and I had a few friends with me who spoke fluent Spanish to help me out. One of my favorite activities was when we went walking through a cave and when we reached the other opening of it the view was absolutely breathtaking. I really loved the view because it is a different view of Puerto Rico that people normally wouldn't associate the country with. 

Another favorite memory was when we visited the one town called Old San Juan.  There were a lot of little shops and vendors throughout the little town.  I thought it was very interesting how brightly colored the buildings were and how the doorways were set up. I also loved how all of the roads were in brick.  

Lastly my favorite view of Puerto Rico was the view of the city of Old San Juan and ocean.  The different colors in the pictures makes for such an interesting aspect. 

Where was your favorite traveling experience to?

Sunrise:

Most people when taking a scenery picture instantly think of sunsets or flowers. I decided it would be interesting to take a picture of the sunrising from Mount Washington.  The contrast between the sun, skyline, river, and bridges made for a very interesting look.  I think this looks very interesting because it almost appears as if the river is frozen, but in reality it is not. It took a lot of patients watching the sun inch up over the mountain but when the results came out it was definitely worth the wait.  Watching the sunrise is a very beautiful and peaceful thing, if you haven't watched one yet I highly suggest going to the lookout one morning and watching, you will not be disappointed. Thoughts on this?

Depth of Field:

Have you ever looked at a picture and noticed that only part of the picture is in focus...well that would be using depth of field.  It is something I love using to shoot with.  Well I am going to tell you all about it and show you examples of it.  I also provided a link at the end of my post that gives a very good tutorial on how to shoot with depth of field. There are many different ways to shoot depth of field, for me it easier to use either my 35mmm to achieve this effect, considering everything is used at a manual setting, or using my Nikon d5000 on the manual setting.  A lot of people find achieving depth of field is very difficult, I find it is easier when you understand and how the subject you are shooting. For instance this picture below is a very good example at depth of field, as you can tell the main focus of the picture is on the one head phone, I find this picture interesting because who would think you would be able to create something so different made up of a MacBook and headphones. Shockingly I actually took this on a simple point in shoot camera because I did not have my other cameras with me, I was simply taking a break from studying and had my headphones laid out across my laptop and thought it would look really cool as a picture. 

The following picture below was taken at Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  I am originally from Erie, Pennsylvania, so when my parents asked me to take my youngest brothers senior pictures I thought it would be different if he did them around here so his would stand out from his other peers.  I think it is very interesting how everything for the most part is out of focus except for the main focal point being my brother.  I thought it was a different approach to taking a portrait. 

Let me know what everyone thinks! Here is the link of anyone wants to try out depth of field, I don't necessarily follow the "rules" they provide in the tutorial, I pretty much just make it up on my own, focusing on what I think looks good, I was only able to do this after understanding what exactly depth of field was and how to work my cameras with it. Depth of Field Tutorial

Shooting Live:

Very good friends of mine are in a band titled A Whisper Rising, I have gone to numerous of their shows to take pictures of them playing live and I must say it is much easier said than done.  It has been something I have always struggled with, I am so glad though I am able to practice shooting with them at their shows.  I have selected a few pictures to show and would like over all feed back. I always chose not to shoot with a flash and use the macro or just turn my flash off.  After doing this I fix my f-stop and shutter speed at a rate where I will be able to capture the image very quickly, this takes the most time for me--figuring out what setting would be best for the different lighting. The picture below on the  was shot with an f-stop number of 3.5 and the shutter speed was set at 1/20 of a second. The lighting in this is very subtle and I did very little editing to this post shooting, which is what I typically do.  In this picture I am instantly reminded of Kurt Cobain.

The next picture I will talk about is when I shot for them during a music video they were shooting titled This City is a Murder Scene.  This was much easier I found to shoot live because of the studio lighting that was set up in the area in which they were filming in. Having good lighting like that makes shooting without a flash much easier to do.  I found that my pictures came out extremely clear and very crisp. As you can tell the pictures below are much more crisp and brighter than the picture above.  The first picture below was shot using an f-stop number 4 and a shutter speed of 1/20 of a second. The other picture below was shot using an f-stop number of 3.5 and a shutter speed of 1/40 of a second.

 

I hope you all enjoyed reading this, let me know what you think. I enjoy hearing feedback about my work!

Untitled:

This is one of my successful photographs I have ever taken throughout my years shooting photography.  This was taken in Erie, Pennsylvania with my 35mm Nikon camera.  I took this several years ago and by far this has been one of my favorite and most successful photographs I have captured. This took me numerous shots and angles in order to find the most successful image.  Any time I photograph a subject I try to take 5-8  pictures of it using different angles and settings because after the image is captured it is never the same again. The title of this has and will remain untitled because I cannot come up with a perfect name to fit the photograph. I find that a black and white photograph does more to the viewers mind than a color one because color can sometimes take away the true beauty of the image being photograph.  I feel that this photograph is very calming and peaceful.  What are your thoughts and overall feelings about this photograph.