Your first assignment is to make five portraits of five different people from your local area who were previously unknown to you.

My initial idea for this assignment was to photograph people in their working environment in order to provide signifiers as to what these did and so provide some information to the viewer about the people being photographed. However, after taking the images for exercise 1.3 I did think about using some of those images instead. Having thought about my approach some more I decided to shoot another series of images based on my original idea and to try and include information in the background, trying in my own way to incorporate the method of August Sander.

My approach was to go in to local shops and cafes etc. and explain what I that I was studying and ask to take some pictures. I deliberately avoided national chains as I though that there was more likelihood of being refused so the locations I ended up shooting in tended to be local, independently owned businesses.

In all I tried asking in nineteen establishments of which fourteen said yes. Things got off to a bit of a shakey start, literally, as in the first store the I was using a shutter speed that was too low and in the second one I did not think carefully enough about the background.

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Viewed at 100% the image above on the left clearly shows camera shake and the one on the right, whilst in focus, does not give any information that the gentelman worked in a bakers. Whilst I got better at remembering to check shutter speed and changing ISO or aperture to achieve a minimum speed of 1/100th second, there were still several images where camera shake was evident when the images were viewed full size.

Of the fourteen people I photographed, the nine images below are the ones I think are worth considering for the final selection.

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Looking again at all the photographs I have decided not to include the following images:

Vape store – due to the overhead lighting the face is over-exposed and I do not think it is clear from the background what the shop is selling so the it does not communicate sufficient information to the viewer. I also think that the shadow created by the peak of the cap is distracting.

Music store – although I like this image with its Rembrandt style lighting, the lady’s face is over-exposed and the image is not sharp. The picture was shot at ISO1000, f2.2 and 1/50th sec; what I should have do was to increase the ISO to 1600 – 2000 to get a faster shutter speed.

University outfitters – although this image was taken at 1/100th sec it is still slightly soft.

Takeaway restaurant – despite being taken at 1/30 sec, the original raw file is reasonably sharp and with some sharpening has produced an acceptable image. My reasons from rejecting this image are first the crop of the man standing on the left and secondly, but more importantly, the lack of information in the background to give context to the image.

Overall I am happy with the final five images, I recognise there are some techinical shortcomings as a result of my decision to photograph people inside but I think these were an acceptable trade-off in order to get images where the backgrounds provided some context. Having shot images outside for exercise 1.3 I realised that that approach makes it much more difficult to provide contextual information when photogrpahing people you do not know.

From a technical perspective this was a very enlightening assignment. I worked quickly as I was aware that people did not have lots of time and this made the assignment challenging, much more so than having to ask people if they would mind having their picture taken. In order to take a successful image it was necessary to consider foreground, background, framing, lighting and settings. I realise that I did not conduct a mental checklist and go through these elements methodically which is why some of my original images did not make it on to my list for condsideration. I think having this mental checklist and working through it is something I can take away from this assignment and hopefully ues in future exercises and assignments.