Urban Photoshoot - Portraiture Brief

In my blog post Mr Gray I told you all about hanging up my darkroom hat for a bit as I wanted to focus, (excuse the pun) more on other aspects of Photography. I applied for a more general photography course a few months earlier.  Putting myself though an interview and selection process was nerve-racking but I was successful in getting a place.  Friends warned it wasn't going to be what I expected it to be, but I thought I'll give it a go anyway.  What's the worst that can happen.  If I don't like it I can walk away.

I'm still trying to get to grips with what's expected.  The workload is challenging.  There's a list of things we need to do and completion dates for final submissions.  There have been a few moans and groans about teachers not actually teaching us anything.  I've recently come to the realisation that this is because college is for adults and adults have to figure things out for themselves.  They call it self-directed study.  When you look back at school, the teacher is pretty much holding your hand to get you through the learning process.  It's their job to teach you a particular subject.  So if you are just out of school, college can seem a harsh reality of the education system you are used to.  I'm not saying I completely agree with it, but this is how it is.

I'd say we're generally shown how to do something once or twice, and then you practise.  If like me you are a bit slow in picking things up, then it's going to be a struggle.  I was the same at school; the only difference now is I'm not scared to ask questions.

I was used to planning shoots for Daisy but they were usually all in my head.  It's out of my comfort zone trying to plan everything but I'll get there. I'm working on a few power point presentations at the moment and have just finished my second photo shoot today.  It doesn't actually take much time to turn up and take the photos.  The hardest part is planning what you want to do and pulling all the elements together.  

I put the war cry out on Facebook a few weeks ago to see if anyone fancied modelling for me.  I needed someone older than Daisy who would be happy to take some direction.  I have to do five Portrait shoots for this brief.  I have to show all my planning in a workbook, poses, lighting examples, styling choices.  I have to include research on photographs I have studied which brought me to my shoot idea.  Out of the shoot, I have to show my tutor around 20 different photographs and narrow my choice down to 15 possible final images.  Out of that 15, I choose 2 to edit further and give my reasons for picking that 2 and disregarding the remaining 13.

We got off to a shaky start as the location that was originally planned fell through, due to a lack of in-house communication.  You always need to have a back up plan, so we got in the car went to location spot B.  I think I'm happier with what I got and straight away a photographer friend said she wanted me to take photos of her in the same spot.  We had a really good time, model Sophie brought along her mum and little sister Sadie.  We almost needed to hold Sadie down as she was very excitable at the prospect of modelling like her big sister.  So, we all stepped aside and let Sadie show us how its done.

The photo on the right is the only one here that has been edited.  The rest of the photos are what photographers refer to as SOOC, which stands for straight out of camera.