/ˈpôrtrət/

 

Noun A painting, drawing, photograph, or engraving of a person. A representation or impression of someone or something in language or on film.

So it was to be a photo of a person,  for the majority of us. Most people in the society considered it to be  a typical face and shoulders portrait, but I’m pretty sure you can have a portrait of an object if you’d wanted to. The image would have to be an impression or a visual description of the item being photographed. Many ideas crossed my mind from cars, musical instruments, hand tools and even old armchairs. Opting to play it safe though I thought better of it and concentrated on a portrait of a family member or a stranger.

Moto-X Mayhem

I was off on holiday in mid-August and thought there might be some decent pictures to take there, but first Ewan and I took a trip to Condover where there was a moto-x championship being held. Not really for a portrait shot but for a morning out with my boy and maybe some action shots.

It was a damp and overcast day so there was plenty of mud about on the track and not much dust. I stood at the edge of a few jumps and tried panning with the bikes and riders as they passed at a good rate of knots but I wasn’t happy with the shots I was getting with my wide angle 10-20 Sigma or my nifty fifty so I threw on the 70-200 tamron lens and started getting some close ups on the action.

This photo came out  quite well and if I wanted to do anything further with it I’d crop it down a bit to take some of the background away on the starboard side of the picture. The camera was set to an ISO of 1250 as it was a little overcast and the exposure time was 1/1600 of a sec, at around 250mm focal length.   It was when I saw this particular shot on my tiny lcd that I figured I might get some portraits of the riders faces as they concentrated coming around the corner where I was now standing.

There we were getting mud thrown at us now and again watching these brave (foolish?) riders going around the track whilst trying to stay on their bikes. The rain held off and I fixed my Canon to my cheapo CamLink monopod. I’ve got a bit of an agricultural ball head on the top of the monopod so it allows me to spin the camera into portait mode if I needed to fill the frame that way, and I was ready to snap a winner.

The nearest I got to something I was happy with is this, it was at full stretch on my 300mm lens with a shutter speed of 1/2000 this time and the same Aperture of f/5.6 that the above photo had.

In my opinion it shows us a realistic portrait of this person and the sport that he was partaking in. If I found nothing else all month this photo would be my submission.

Flowery Photos

Mid-August sees the Shrewsbury Flower Show held in the Quarry Park and the thursday before the friday it was due to open I popped into the Quarry to take a look around see if there was any portraits to be had. There was a Territorial Army marching band practicing in the main arena so I sat, watched and listened to the great spectacle and aural feast whilst snapping pictures of the musicians and the conductor.

I have photos of trombone players with puffed out cheeks, drummers and other brass players but none that I could call a good picture. The only one that I’d consider a portrait would be this one below, just the candid nature of the shot and the expression is something that I find quite amusing. Still wouldn’t use this over the moto-x mud monster though. I also had a wander into the tents where the show flowers were being set up by the exhibitors and tried taking a few candid portraits of people taking immeasurable care to place their blooms in just the right way, but no decent images came out of that.

Holibobs

For the next part of the month it was time to board the 757 from Manchester to Mahon for our sunny family holiday. Before we’d left I’d been regretting not buying a waterproof digicam so I could use it around the pool and not have to worry about my 500D getting wet. Last time we went on a sunny hols in Europe we’d come back with a great photo and I wanted to replicate that. it was also vaguely resembling a family portrait, apart from my wife Jo was holding the camera. Below is that photo from 2009. I can’t believe I have more hair on my moobs than on my head.

In the duty free at Manchester I managed to purchase a Fuji XP61 waterproof camera. Shock-proof and waterproof I figured it would make a great addition to having the DSLR with me. I started snapping with it as soon as I had it and found I was getting the 500D out only for “worthy” shots where I’d have more time to set up or needed the manual settings flexibility.

The kids were in the pool as soon as we got to Sa Caleta, Menorca and I figured that there was bound to be a great picture in here somewhere. There wasn’t any family shot like above but there were a couple of portraits that I found quite likeable. This self-portrait or selfy as my kids call them, shows me under the water with a good bit of light coming into the water, in the shady areas of the pool the shots all came out very dark.

This one was using my Fuji XP61 and it chose an ISO of 100 and an F6.2, the shutter speed was fast enough at 1/550sec.

Deciding that I didn’t really want to do a selfy I had this one of Ewan after about half an hour of telling him to go further away from the camera. It was like the camera was magnetic and kept pulling him towards it. It’s quite well lit and once I’d returned home to a sunny bank holiday weekend I took some time to look through the photos I decided this one was probably up there with my moto-x racer.

 

 

 

 

As the month drew to a close and with the absence of any really great photos for the portrait category I found that I had to submit one so chose the photo of my boy in the pool on holiday. There were some great photos submitted by the other members of the club and I wasn’t surprised to find that I was low down in the scoring.

Two particular portraits stood out and they had been carefully lit and staged using models and props. Looking at them you would state that it was obviously a portrait, the same style of portrait that you’d see in many galleries and magazines.

There was a brief chat about what a portrait should be and there were a couple of pictures like mine that were thought to not fit into the category.

 

The winner, Graham, was worthy and very modest but he’d taken a great shot and deserved the plaudits.