For this brief, I had to take 3 portrait photographs. One of myself, one of a friend or family member and one of a stranger. When thinking of the location for my personal shoots, I knew I wanted to have a link to nature. Most photography I take personally is landscape based and of beautiful natural locations, normally in the highlands of Scotland. I think that the different colours and textures of nature are a lot more visually interesting than anything man made.

The first two pictures (me and my sister) were taken in the park opposite our house. Its a location we are both very comfortable in, having spent a lot of time there as we grew up. I did this specifically so that the portraits looked relaxed and natural. We also don’t look into the camera, I chose these photos specifically for this reason. I wanted to convey more the feelings the subject felt in the location than how the camera was making the subject feel. Its more like the camera is viewing a private moment or that the camera isn’t the most important thing on the subjects minds.

In contrast, the stranger photo has the subject looking right into the camera. He is hiding behind his hair and you can tell that the only thing on his mind is the fact that he is having his photo taken. Whereas the first two convey a more relaxed calm atmosphere, you can feel the uncomfortableness of the subject in the last photo.

Although I did not specifically set out to obtain these results, I do think that that they are really good and convey a lot of messages. It really shows how relationships are visible to see in pictures and how a familiarity can make even the unusual, (like asking your sibling to climb in a tree so you can take her photo) normal and even relaxed. Whereas asking a stranger just to look into a camera for a few seconds can be stressful and tense.

I ran into some issues when it came to taking the photos, primarily is the fact that the images are in landscape orientation. This is mostly down to the fact that my tripod broke at the start of the shoot. As it was quite an overcast day, I needed the tripod to keep the camera steady as I was using a slower shutter speed, however, my tripod could no longer keep my camera on while it was tilted into portrait orientation. This meant that unfortunately my images are all landscapes. Another thing I am not as happy with is that because I took my photos over the Easter Holidays, I didnt have access to the better lenses, therefore the depth of field isn’t as shallow as I wanted it to be. This I can only blame myself for, as I held off completing this brief for too long while completing other work. If I were to retake these, I would have definitely used the lens I used for my practice images (which I believe was the telephoto lens).