Exercise 1: Portrait, Scale and Setting

For this exercise I used my son as a subject as he had come home for the weekend, it being his birthday. As he is not always available I made sure that he had his turn!!! I tried different set ups for this exercise using some photographs from the Guardian colour supplement as a stimulus. (Unfortunately this edition found its way into the recycling and so I cannot use the photos.)
I took photographs in four different situations: sitting on the settee in the conservatory, sitting at the dining room table (as I had seen in the Guardian supplement), sitting in the car (again an idea from the Guardian) and cleaning his bike. In each case I took a series of face cropped in close, head and shoulders, torso and full figure.

1. Conservatory

I liked this full face image. Thomas was quite relaxed and talking to his mother. I used the lens at 78mm and the camera was on a tripod.

Here he enjoys a joke.

I had to move the camera back for this image and used the lens at full zoom of 85mm.



Again he is very relaxed in this image.

Here I zoomed out to 35 mm and kept the camera on the tripod in the same position.

For this full figure shot Thomas is obviously very relaxed. I had no need to direct him as he adopted this pose whilst talking to his mother who was in front of him. I kept the camera in the same position and zoomed out to 17mm.

• Sitting at the dining room table
  

Here I have zoomed in to produce a cropped face image.









I have used the 180mm setting on my 100-400 lens. The camera was on a tripod. I asked him to support his face on his hands as in the Guardian image and look straight at me.



















In this shot I asked him to look to one side. I prefer this image it is more informal.

Here he is laughing during a converation with his mum. Again I like the informality.

I have now zoomed out to 85mm. He is very relaxed.

Again 85 mm and I took photographs as he was talking to his mum. A good technique I think!!

Now zoomed to 26 mm. I think that this picture needs some post processing. We don't have a brown wall!!! The pictures were taken using natural light.

Now 17 mm. The image on the right has had the levels adjusted in photoshop but the wall still looks too brown.