Portrait Challenge

The focus of this week’s meeting (pun intended) was to take a look at portrait photography and how we might make use of natural and artificial light. Members had been asked to take two portraits, one under each of the two lighting conditions, and we were to look at these and discuss the technicalities and merits of the photos.

Before this section of the meeting began we had the second of our 5-minute talk sessions. This week it was the turn of Joe and Simon.

Joe gave us a talk on tripods, why we might need a tripod, the types of tripods available and the factors we should consider when investing in a tripod. Joe had clearly put a lot of thought into this presentation and raised many points that many of us might not have considered or even been aware of. You can see Joe’s presentation by clicking on the image on the left.

Simon’s presentation nicely bridged the two topics, tripods and portrait photography. Yousef Karsh being the subject along with an 8 x 10 Gandolfi field camera. Simon showed us examples of Karsh’s ‘Hollywood’ style portraits of some of the famous people he photographed including the one of Winston Churchill below. Simon also set up his Gandolfi camera and explained the inner workings of the fantastic piece of equipment along with the study tripod and mechanical head.

Many thanks to both Simon and to Joe for their differing yet informative presentations.

The portrait challenge section saw us look at all the photos members had taken and discuss each in turn from a technical and aesthetic point of view. Hopefully members learnt much not only from having their own photos critiqued but also those of the other members. Additionally we hope that there may be some members who were inspired to have a go at a particular style of photography they might not have considered before or make use of the lighting equipment that the club owns.

A gallery of some of the portraits can be seen below.

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