Photography

Title: Death by Plastic Sword

Date taken: 12/4/12

Camera: Panasonic Lumix

Lens: Standard

Shutter speed: 1/50 sec

F-stop: f/4.5

ISO: 3200

Focal length: 14mm

Tripod: yes

When I first heard about the portrait assignment, I was excited to get started. This was not only because I had never really tried portraiture before, but also because I discovered that I have access to a photography studio at Rocky. Sadly, however, because I was unable to use the studio due to schedule conflicts and my own absent-mindedness, I decided that my next best option would be setting up a mini-studio in my family’s dining room.

Because I am a busy person, the only time I had available to take these portraits was at night with the absence of all natural light. To aid this, I moved furniture around in order to make room to set up my tripod and the additional lights needed to take the sharp pictures I wanted.

Once my little studio was set up, I had my little sister put on some makeup and nice clothes. I also had my little brother get dressed up, letting him choose his own outfit while I told him to grab his plastic sword as a prop. After both of my siblings were ready to go, I began with taking pictures of my sister – experimenting with one of the lamps I used as a light source, and trying a variety of angles and distances to achieve different effects. Immediately after finishing with my sister, I had my little brother take his turn. While my sister generally stood still and tried to look as pretty as possible, my little brother was a fountain of energy and expression. Because of his energy, and his inability to stand still, I had a difficult time getting crisp clear pictures of him, though his expressions where very interesting and amusing.

After taking many, many pictures, I uploaded them to my computer and sorted through them one by one – discarding the bad ones, and editing the good ones in photoshop. While I left several of them alone, my two favorites (one of my sister, and one of my brother), where adjusted using levels, brightness/contrast, and my sister’s face was touched up slightly with the clone tool.

Overall, I feel like my journey into portraiture was successful, and I enjoyed taking shots of my siblings. While using a professional studio would have been a wonderful experience, I feel as if using the dining room was an even better place because it allowed my siblings to be in a surrounding where they felt most comfortable and at-ease, allowing me to take a greater variety of pictures. Altogether, I enjoyed the project and hope that sometime in the near future I will be able to take a greater variety of portraits – not only of my family but of other people as well.