Week 11

Last Week:

Last week I decided that I wanted to pursue the Downy Woodpecker by replicating the series of rolls that the bird performs on the drums.

I’ve been engaging in this exercise on the practice pad, but it’s not ready for show time.

This week:

I realized that I should provide space for the creative outlets that show up in my day-to-day life organically. I ended up spending some of my time that I’d intended to spend drumming on a different endeavor: Portrait Photography.

“You can adjust exposure and color settings later, you can crop a photograph in post, but you can never expand your edges out of frame.”

3 Mantras in Photography

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Irons in the Fire

The expression “Irons in the Fire” comes from smithing, when a blacksmith would be working on multiple pieces at the same time. It is typically used to indicate that someone has many tasks or projects in process at the same time.

In smithing, if you have too many irons in the fire they will sap the heat from the fire and ultimately extinguish it. Similarly, the expression too many irons in the fire is used to suggest that someone has taken on too many tasks or projects.

Part of why I started this blog was because I am such an avid hobbyist with a wide range of interests that shift over time. When I develop an interest in something new I tend to study it from every angle that I can find. I do not intend to walk away from these pursuits while working on this blog, and I do hope that some of them will just naturally work their way into it.

These past 2 weeks I realized that sometimes these other irons in the fire suck away the time and energy that I have available to put into this blog, and that’s going to have to be ok, because I only have so much time available! I am going to try to pull those side-projects onto the blog when applicable, and I figured this photo session was a good place to start.

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Photography

I started studying Photography in High School working in a darkroom in Black and White with film. I continued with a single semester on digital photography at Skidmore College, and the top three things I learned were: resolve your edges, understand the rule of thirds, and get the exposure and color settings right.

I’ve since learned that you can adjust exposure and color settings in post-production but there is such a thing as an unrecoverable starting point, you can always crop a photograph in post but you may not be able to achieve the ratio you’re looking for, and you absolutely cannot change the edges of what you capture beyond the frame.

Aspects of Headshots – Posing

Most of my photographic work has been focused on nature, textures, landscapes, wildlife, and other Subjects. I’ve been able to apply those principles across those subjects, but when I started preparing for this headshot session I realized that I have never studied an Aspect of photography that is unique to portraits: posing.

I hopped online and read about poses that you might ask the person that you’re working with to articulate and how you might prompt your subject to achieve them.

There was a lot of helpful information – shift the shoulders of your subject off-axis from the camera, have them tilt their near or far ear towards or away from the camera, have them interact with their hair, or a wall, or try cutting their body in half by bringing an arm across their face.

Most of the tips are about getting a flattering look at the jaw-line, and positioning the Subject in ways that are slimming.

I started by making a list of options in my journal and decided to pick 3 that I would bring to the session which included:

• Look over shoulder
• Sitting on the ground
• Hand in (back) pockets
• One hand on hip
• Lean forward slightly
• Hands over head
• Play w/Hair
• Lean back slightly
• Lean against wall
• Arms crossed
• Standing “S” shape
• Weight on one (back) leg
• Cozy / Hug self
• Hand toward camera
• Rest elbows on table
• Rest on Hand

Overall I went with: Hand on hip, Lean forward slightly, and lean back slightly as my 3 prompts for posing.

Actually Taking Headshots

Instilling confidence and being specific in how your subject should express themselves and interact with the camera are quite different from the straight-forward literature that you might read.

Communicating what you are looking for from the person that you are photographing is extraordinarily challenging. Not everyone that steps in front of a camera knows these subtleties (I didn’t until I sought them out).

It was extraordinarily helpful that my subject for this session was someone that I know well (my mother-in-law) and that my wife was able to help coach and through the session.

Top Shots

Session Notes

We ended up with about 13 quality shots to choose from after about 30 minutes of shooting with about 5-10 minutes of breaks. I am definitely satisfied with the results – I’m usually happy to get at least 5 options to choose from in a session with someone.

Posing

I find the different tilt of the shoulders and head across the shots very interesting and the variety suggests that there are a lot of positions/poses that work for portrait photography. I also found that moving with the camera rather than using a tripod to work well.

Communicating

I had difficulty communicating what I meant at time – asking Cathy to move her head by tilting an ear one direction or another definitely didn’t work, and communicating how to position her shoulders or look across her body also was tricky. Asking her to make subtle changes to her positioning ‘on each click’ worked well.

I also tried to keep my ‘tips’ limited as well to avoid giving Cathy too much to think about, which I think was a good approach.

My wife Brenna did a better job of asking Cathy to think of topics or emotions and other ‘soft-prompts’ to elicit different reactions than I did. I will continue to think about what sort of prompts may work well in the future.

Lessons

I took almost all shots in landscape and I was surprised to find that I couldn’t properly crop some of them into the traditional 8 x 10 portrait ratio. That makes me start to think that some of these are ‘headshots’ rather than ‘portraits’, and that there is a difference between the two. I will need to ensure I’m taking more shots with portrait framing during the session to ensure I get portrait crop options (I got lucky this time).

As I mentioned, I need to think about how to communicate ideas with my Subject so that they can achieve variety in their expression and I need to continue to think about how to communicate head and shoulders positioning more effectively.

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What Next?

Let me know which shot you like the most! What do you like about it? Let me know if you have ideas for different poses, or better yet ideas for ‘soft-prompts’ to draw out different expressions in a Subject.

Otherwise, this week I will return to the Downy Woodpecker drumming étude so stay tuned!

Some Housekeeping: I will also be shifting my publishing day to Tuesdays.

See you next time!