Each month, IOP® Tutor Michael Barrow sets a project, asking students to post a link to their favourite shot which fits the project brief. In February 2016, the project was portraiture. Students were asked to submit a recent portrait and Michael chose 3 of his favourites. Each winner receives a £10 Amazon voucher and recognition and kudos from the forum community.
Winner 1: Tim van Zundert
Michael said:
I thought I’d had my winners chosen until this submission by Tim. As a fine art graduate and son of a painter, I’m always looking for that bit more than just technical ability, megapixels and thousands of pounds’ worth of kit at your disposal.
This shot screams narrative and though there have probably been thousands of A-Level Photography students over the years who have taken to the bathroom to shoot themselves in the name of ‘transgressive’ or suggestive art, it takes a subtler and more thoughtful approach to convey true intimacy.
Tim, I feel as though you have conveyed this here. First of all, the composition is great. It’s confrontational and the fact that you managed to get the angle shooting straight down onto yourself is admirable. You even managed to apply the rule of thirds.
As mentioned in my general comment, that ‘snapshot’ look you’ve achieved may be because the focus is slightly off, or because you were in fact shooting film of some sort. Whatever the reason, I don’t want to know, because it works. It’s grainy and real life and I could see myself flicking to it in a book of modern photography.
One thing I would perhaps stray away from is providing us with too much about the image before we view it. Your submission had quite the depth, which I understand must be contextualised to some extent, but it’s important that your viewer can be touched by images without too much background explanation.
Your social anxiety could be portrayed through a whole series of these images for example; you could go on to start a full project of self portraits tackling this theme – your way of socialising. Providing too much information for a single image can sometimes dilute the power of that image, so just be careful. That being said, great shot!
See more of Tim’s Work here.
Winner 2: Helen Wines
Michael said:
I wanted to include an animal portrait not just as a different take on the project theme, but knowing full well just how difficult and unpredictable animals can be to shoot. You can spend hours sitting in front of the fire with your dog or cat, until you finally get that perfect shot but shooting wild animals and nature takes a somewhat more patient mind set.
Frankly, I’ve no idea how Helen got this shot, nor have I much grasp on how she’s edited the shot. I’m really intrigued as to the proximity here. Normally, even without the EXIF data, we would be able to tell if a zoom lens had been used to capture this shot from the corner of the garden or sitting by the conservatory window, but something tells me there’s a genuine closeness here.
It may have been that Helen was feeding the squirrel, or that it was simply very intrigued by her presence, but I don’t believe there was a zoom lens used.
The shot is framed really well and that sweeping whip of the tail leaving the image just to peak back into focus above the animal’s head makes for a really pleasant composition. I’m not always the biggest fan of blowing out backgrounds and upping the contrast and saturation in images, but I really don’t mind it here. It’s not offensive on the eye, or ‘crass’ as those techniques can sometimes make a shot.
Overall this shot confused and surprised me, because the longer I looked at it, the more I was interested by it. I also had a brief look through Helen’s Flickr and came across another stonker of a shot of what looks like a Falcon or Kestrel or Hawk in mono You obviously have quite the eye for relating the majesty and character of animals to ways of editing in photography Helen! Great work.
See more of Helen’s work here.
Winner 3: Ivan Trotman
Michael said:
This image shows what can be done when the conditions are all right there for you. Ivan mentioned that he shot this at a photography trade show, where lamps and the model were there, ready for him to take a sneaky capture. And the results are great!
There’s a wonderful naturally intense look on the models face, the clarity of the image is great and the colours wonderful. There’s also a nice bokeh from the high aperture and the 45-50mm focal length –perfect for portraiture.
Sometimes that keen creative eye can pick out instances like this, and jump at them and I dare say this image required very little editing. Perhaps consider tweaking those colour and light levels. It also looks as if there’s a light flare/leak popped in or emphasised above the models head, but again, this could be from the lamps.
What I would consider doing is getting your content aware tool and taking out that lamp stand to the right of the model. Then you’re basically left with a solid, none contextualised portrait. It could happily be used as stock (providing you get a model release signed).
See more of Ivan’s work here.
