nick

A new good friend of mine, Nick. Here Nick is posing with a DVD, that I made a series of similar portraits through. As part of the workshop we were given a fairly random item and then instructed to make some images around, involving or relating to that object - all with it physically present in the picture. I was thoroughly unimpressed with the object I got. I harboured jealousy towards the people that got the interesting items, umbrellas, weird and wonderful gadgets and here I was stuck with a DVD. I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I was unmotivated, uninspired, then I was asked to pose for a record shot of my item and I immediately looked through it. So without thought, I had my theme. For once an idea came to me completely formed, without lots of logical progression. So I went with that. I wanted to make all the images have a similar style and composition, so I shot 12 images all in this similar portrait style. Tight crop, portrait orientation, about the same amount of the DVD and person in each frame. This shot of Nick was by far my favourite. The blue/ purple hue worked well with his hat and that hat also provides a great frame and repetition. I think the lettering on the edge of the brim really plays well against the lettering around the DVD too.Nick also took one of my favourite portraits of me on the whole workshop. At one point during dinner I went around the table, taking a picture of each person and asking them to shoot one of me. It was interesting to see the different takes on a simple portrait like that from 11 different photographers. Even though we were all in the same location, with the same light and restrictions, people really brought their own approach to it. Some just took fairly simple pictures. Others moved me around to catch certain light or colours, others worried about the background, some waited for a good reaction. Nick got me to crouch down and look upwards towards him and the light and that really worked well. Inspiring.