Shoot 5 - Candid portraits

In this shoot I plan to use the skills that I gathered from practicing taking portraits in previous shoots, and apply that to this shoot. However, I want to take more candid photos where I haven't asked the people in the photos to pose or anything I'm just taking photos of the moment as it happens. I think this will help me practice using and learn the importance of shutter speed as the people in the photographs will be moving and I have to make sure that the pictures don't come out blurry. My inspiration for this shoot is Jim Goldberg's project 'Coming and Going'. I love how real his images feel and candid, and it feels as if we're flipping through someone's life. The photobook is exciting and interesting to look at as it varies through older photographs and newer photographs with a variety of colours and tones and little notes. I plan to experiment with black and white monochrome photos again as inspired by Sam Contis, and I plan to shoot in the candid style like Jim Goldberg. The shoot will be taken in my house and the pictures will be of my family members. I want to continue to use natural lighting as I like how it adheres to the theme and the visual aesthetic of it.

The sheet below shows the images from the shoot and the selection process. If the lighting, framing or if it was out of focus I did not use the image.

Next I took the working images to Photoshop and editing the brightness/contrast a little bit to make them more underexposed and moody because I really like that aesthetic and I think it does link to Sam Contis' work. To edit them I used the 'brightness/ contrast' adjustment in the adjustments and properties tab.

Edited Images:

I like how the images turned out but I think they lack a bit of depth and if I edited them to be black and white it would add more contrast and give the images some depth. So, I took the images back to Photoshop and used the black and white adjustment in the adjustment bar.

I think changing the images to black and white really helped the images aesthetically and it added some depth and dimension by bringing out the shadows. I tried to keep the contrast high without making it too harsh, so the shadows turned out softer and the natural lighting made the lighting in the images look very soft which I really like. During this shoot I found that I prefer taking images from further away because I think visually it allows me to capture the whole moment happening rather than part of it with a close up with ties with the theme of memory, and will help me overall when I put them with the older photographs in my final outcome to match the brief of 'transformation'. I also noticed the repetition of rectangular shapes, and also the subject being off-centre and more towards the left of the screen is repeated. I like how this looks as it allows the viewers eye to be drawn across the whole picture so the whole 'moment' is being viewed rather than the eye being drawn to the subject in the centre of the image. Technically, I did use a faster shutter speed so that the movement in the images wouldn't cause them to be blurry or out of focus, and I kept the photos slightly underexposed. I could've shot a bit more photos and also tried to shoot them closer together in time because the lighting was slightly affected. In my next shoot I definitely want to keep shooting candidly as it ties in with the theme and I think it will visually compliment the archival photographs. I also want to keep editing my images to black and white because I really like the depth and dimension it adds to the photographs and how it effects the mood of the photos.