Exercise: Review a portrait sequence.

Outline: Set up a formal and structured portrait session with consistent setting and framing. Take a considerable number of images and concentrate on the subjects expression. Then review the sequence and categorize your images into:

• not good
• acceptable
• good 
• best shot

I set up a shoot for, once again, my boyfriend to have photos taken at a local site, Ogmore Castle ruins. I thought this would be another interesting location for a shoot and a slightly different backdrop. I always liked wedding photos where the bride and groom have formal shots taken in historical ruins and buildings so I thought I'd try my own twist on that.

The shoot started off well. Straight into the site and straight into the poses, although my boyfriend can be a joker and the minute I start directing him or get serious, he lightens the mood by pulling faces, which made my 'not good' selection pretty interesting! First off we shot near a window so he kept the pose simple and I altered my position to give more angles.

Moving onto the bridge across the empty moat,  my model kept his pose serious with lots of eye contact to the camera alternating his pose to standing up straight with his hands in his pockets to keep the pose a little less formal. We then tried him looking off to the side and then leaning on the bridge, looking away and then at the camera. I liked the images on the bridge, he looked even more relaxed and not as stiff as he had while stood up and didn't think there was much more we could do there so we moved into the castle itself. 

There was a set of steps where I thought a change of position would be beneficial so directed him to sit down and pose how he felt comfortable. I think he was starting to relax even more now and it showed in his pose, whether looking at the camera or away. He looked more confident now. He even started to smile in his poses and even laying along the top step to vary his poses, which I didn't even think of which was great. 

We moved over to the outer castle wall to take some more shots and to vary the background yet again, which in hindsight doesn't really show the castle but shows the lovely countryside around the castle and that wasn't really the purpose of the location. However, these images were very successful, my favourite image of the shoot was taken at this point. My model had loosened up a lot and even though he was uncomfortable sitting on the stone wall, it doesn't show in his body language or his face. He looks comfortable, relaxed and with no tension at all, again even smiling for some shots to appear less formal. Even when he answered his phone, some of the shots were usable as portraits due to the natural tone of them. 

Finally, I wanted to try and incorporate the main body of the castle ruins into the image. My subject tried a few poses, standing and sitting on one wall but I didn't feel that these worked very well and were not what I was trying to achieve. He looked awkward and tense, probably as he was uncomfortable and couldn't find a position that worked well for him. After he had moved, he started to smile again, which made me feel he was more relaxed in this position and able to continue on. 

I felt that this was a good time to finish the shoot as I didn't feel I could get anything from the location that I hadn't already got. I had experimented with poses and expressions and various locations across the site and felt any more would feel samey and I didn't feel that that was necessary.

I took a number of photographs on the shoot:

Shooting in RAW obviously doubled the images in my browser. Going through the images, I categorized them into the required fields.

Not Good images

These images were the ones that were completely unusable. This was due to my subject talking, blinking, pulling faces or messing about and blurring.

Acceptable images

There were a lot that were acceptable with a variety of poses, locations and gestures. These are in this field purely because there were better images in the sequence that could've been used.

Good images

These are the images that I narrowed down to be my favourite of the sequence. The first couple are from the start of the shoot where he looks a little stiff but his poses are good and the rest are what I feel are the ones where he looks most natural.

Single best shot

This had to be my favourite of the shoot. The subject is the main focus and the backdrop looks great. He looks happy, the expression and pose are perfect. The camera angle and lighting is good and the image has nice depth. And it looks very natural.

Conclusion:
I always find it very difficult to undertake the processing stage of shoots like this, exactly what this exercise is about. I always find that the images I really like while shooting aren't the best ones when it comes to reviewing them. Same with this shoot. As I said, I had this lovely castle backdrop but when it came down to it, my favourite image doesn't really incorporate the castle at all. Maybe it was because the castle was just to busy a backdrop on its own, which is why when it came to photographing my subject on the main ruins I couldn't find any image that I particularly liked , as explained in the notes above. This just proves how important reviewing your sequences are following shooting.