Assignment, Week 10: The Portrait Project
The assignment this week is to combine all of the elements we've learned the past few weeks to do a portrait session with another student in the class. Specifically, you want to focus on the following things:
- Lighting (direction, intensity)
- Vantage point (camera direction, setting, background)
- Perspective (subject distance vs. focal length)
- Depth of field
- Directing the subject (poses, props, expression)
Before you start shooting, log in to the gallery, choose 2 photos from the portrait samples in the Examples folder
(or if other students have already uploaded theirs, you can choose those too), and evaluate each of these elements:
- What was done?
- How did it work out?
- How would you have done it?
I've posted an
example of an evaluation here. It doesn't need to be this extensive, but this is
just an example of the kind of thought process you want to go through.
For this assignment, you should try to find a partner from the class, so you can get your own portrait taken as well. By doing this you get to put
yourself into the shoes of the subject, which helps a lot with the 5th element - learning how to direct and pose the subject.
If you haven't found a partner yet, shoot me an email.
I'd highly recommended coming up with some kind of theme to base your portrait session around - it sort of serves as a creative catalyst and gives
direction when you're planning out the shots you want.
When we talk about your photos in a couple of weeks, you'll come up and present your photos - talk about the theme you chose, and what you did/tried
to do with each of the five elements listed above.
On another note, if you want, shoot in RAW - we'll start talking about post-processing and what you can do with RAW files vs. your ordinary JPG.
Assignment Summary:
- Do a portrait session with someone else in the class.
- Evaluate three photos from the Week 10 portrait examples folder. You can see an example evaluation here.
- Pay attention to the five elements: lighting, vantage point, perspective, depth of field, directing the subject
- Come up with your own theme
- You'll be presenting your photos for the assignment
- Shoot in RAW, if you'd like
