portraits

My goal for this semester is to get more comfortable with taking portraits of people. While in NYC visiting my sister, who is totally uninhibited in front of a camera, I got the chance to direct a little bit more and got some shots that i really like. This week I am trying to focus more on faces/close up portraits of people (also i've been challenged by Frank to take pictures of 5 different people). I have found that talking to people and taking pictures until they forget that i have a camera is an easy way to get natural shots of them. Otherwise they tense up and smile in unnatural ways.

I didn't get a chance to go to the Clark digital darkroom which means I was using an uncalibrated screen so I realize that the colors are a bit off, but I'll fix that before going on.

This is my friend Marianna and I loved how natural her laughter was in this picture. You can tell she is not faking a thing and you can almost hear the laughter.

Libby is not this yellow, but I was editing on an uncalibrated screen so it needs more editing... also she has the bluest eyes but when I sharpened the photo they darkened up. I was only editing in bridge so I did not use the layer where I could put the bright layer under and lighten the eyes (i hope that last sentence made sense!)

Again this picture was a natural shot. Not forced which I love. I need to darken the background a little bit so that Ben is the main focus of the picture and not the bright sky.

I'm looking forward to take more pictures of people! It's been really fun so far and I have no idea what exactly I was nervous about to begin with...