Igor

It seems I never shoot portraits or people, but here I am with another portrait just two days after my last one. I guess people are part of the natural world, so in a sense, it can qualify as nature--sort of, but not really.

Igor is one of my roommates. He needed a portrait for his sites and had been asking for months. Finally I gave in and made several of him. This is one I like.

He insisted on wearing his sunglasses, and it was a little difficult exposing so I'd show his eye without underexposing all the shadows. I used partial metering on his eye and it worked perfectly! Even I was surprised.

Settings used for this image taken in my backyard were as follows. ISO 400 because he was in the shade, 1/320 at F5.6 for shallow depth of field in aperture priority, (You may notice I use aperture priority mode for 99% of my shots. That's because I like to control the depth of field.) +1/3 exposure compensation, 180mm focal lenth with my 55-250mm lens.

Man in Conflict

I noticed this guy while walking at Bay Walk with my grandson. He seems to have some kind of problem, judging by what he's wearing, or he's protesting something. This is just a grab shot, but I've never seen anything like this before and I wondered what he's all about.

His pants, if you can call them that are made of various patches from different types of material, either sewed, strung or tied together wrapped around his legs.That vest, and his unkempt hair says the rest. Conflict, disorder, partisan, and that drawing makes me wonder what on earth he's protesting or trying to say.

I caught up with him again and wanted to take a photo of his face, but he gave me this mean look before I could even lift my camera. I didn't dare try. He looked so mean or angry. His face was split in half, sort of like Michael Jackson's black and white video, but one side of his face had a long, thick, black beard and a thick mustache, while the other side was clean shaven. I guess it takes all kinds.

I won't give you all the technical details on how this was shot since it was only a grab shot, or a snap shot. I didn't have much time to think. I just shot it the way the camera was set for the previous photo.

Scott

This morning, while Scott was getting ready for a new job interview, he asked me to make a photo of him while he was dressed up. Scott is camera-shy, and not the easiest person to photograph. After several attempts of trying to get him to relax, he started to joke around. It gave me the chance to catch him off-guard and get a more natural image of him.

The sun was overhead, and it wasn't the best time to be shooting a portrait, but I decided to give a try, anyway. I'm also not the best portrait photographer around. I'm a trained photojournalist, so usually my photos of people are unposed and more natural-looking.

I didn't do much editing on this one--not even a crop. The compressed jpg looks like it could use a bit of warming, but the original file doesn't appear like this. We lose so much when we compress files. That's one reason I stress to my students to always begin with the largest photo the camera is capable of producing. If I wanted to take this a step further, I'd probably add a little bit of warmth to it, but it's late, I'm tired, and I already gave him the full resolution file which doesn't quite appear as cool (in temperature).

I placed him in the shade, so he wouldn't squint. Because the sun was overhead (11:41 am), I chose to use a bit of fill flash so he wouldn't have "raccoon eyes". My flash is set on -1 eV and in my camera, I underexposed about -1/3 stop so as to not blow out the whites in the sun. My camera was set at ISO 200 (because I forgot to set it to 100; shame on me), in Aperture Priority mode at F5.6 and my shutter speed set to 1/250. I used my 18-55mm lens at 55mm. If he had looked directly at the camera, as he did in some of the others, he couldn't relax. Sometimes it's better to have them look away from the camera.

He calls this one "looking to the heavens for his next girl friend". I don't know if that tactic will work! :)

Frank and his Red-Neck Spatula

My friends from my photo group (Florida State Photography Meetup Group) went on a picnic today to say goodbye to Frank (pictured) and Bill for a little while.

(Frank comes to Florida from upstate NY and stays 8 months then goes back to NY, and Bill just bought property in Mexico, and will be gone 2 months or so.)

As usual, being human, we all forgot some key essentials, like a cooler, ice, condiments and a spatula. We couldn't figure out what to do to turn the chicken and burgers, so Frank came up with an idea to use the Styrofoam plate that the burgers came in. He had to be quick so it didn't catch on fire, but it worked.

We had a lot of fun with that. Since we're in the south, (Florida) I dubbed it a red-neck spatula.

Oh yes, by the way, we had a great time; as usual when we're all together. We didn't take many photos, but still had a great time.

If you like my photos and would like to see more, check out my website at http://LoyceHoodPhoto.com.

Loyce