The objective for this exercise was to shoot a series of three images of different people, either indoors or outdoors, using the same background.

Having opted to shoot outside I struggled to find a background that I thought was interesting and, as I was shooting on one of the few days recently where it was not grey, overcast and wet; I struggled with the strong sunlight. I did find a location which I thought was good in terms of lighting and below is an image I shot there. In addition to the lighting, I also like how the greenery borders the image, leaving a lighter central area.

I like the image, althought I would normally frame tighter; I think I could have shot at f4.0 or f3.5 instead of f4.5, to throw the background more out of focus, and ideally I would have positioned the gentleman slightly more centrally. However, the main issue was not with the image, but rather the lack of people who were willing to have their photograph taken as the spot was in a slightly out of the way part of the city. Because of this I decided stop, rethink my approach and try again the next day.

The following day I looked at several locations that had more people passing by and I took some shots of them without people to consider the lighting and how they would work as backgrounds. Again there was strong sunlight, although not as strong as the previous day, so I was mindful of trying to avoid the sun being in people’s eyes, flare or unwanted shadows. The test shots are shown below.

In the end I rejected all of them as I thought they were all too busy and I finally chose to shoot in front of a boarded up doorway as this gave me a simple background and no lighting issues. Below are contact sheets of all the images I took.

Despite being a plain background I did have some issues because of trying to work quickly. My favourite model was the gentleman shown below who looked very dapper with his bow tie and immaculately groomed moustache and beard.

However, because the gentleman was very tall the bolt that had been visible in the previous images, but without being an issue, is growing out of his head. In addition to the bolt, this image also shows an issue I had with framing. As I was concentrating on getting the eyes in focus a I did not always re-compose to ensure that the subject was positioned centrally in the frame. My issues with framing were also compounded by the fact that where I was standing on the pavement was slightly higher, 10 – 15 centimetres, than the doorway which resulted in the subjects being positioned lower in the frame that I would have liked; but not low enough in this case.

Having realised that I need to avoid photographing people with a bolt sticking out of their head I recognised that I need to avoid positioning them centrally and asked them to stand to either side of the doorway. Below are my selected three images. They were taken with an 85mm lens at aperatures of f2.2 or f2.8. There is some separation from the backgound, which is slightly blurred, but because the distance between the models and the background was not too great, the grain is still visible; which I like.

In the end I was pleased with my choice of background as I think it encourages the viewer to focus on the subject. I also think the bare wood give the images an urban feel which is consistent with the approach of shooting street portraits of random people.