Ex 4: An active portrait

I am good friends with the owners of Walkers Cycling, so emailed them to see if I could take picture of the mechanics in the workshop for my active portrait. I visited the shop on 24/10/09 and spoke to Drew. I had met him briefly once before, so explained about my OCA course, the exercise and what I was hoping to achieve from the shoot. We spent some time chatting about cycling and his job, building a good rapport, then I suggested he worked on a bike and I would "snap" away while he worked. I felt it was important that the shots didn't look set up.

Problems quickly became apparent. The harsh strip lights were casting strong shadows and the workshop is very cramped so it was difficult to work to a wider angle. I kept the white balance on auto and the picture only needed cooled down slightly in Photoshop. ISO was around 400-800 using auto. The strong ambient light helped keep the ISO resonably low so there is little noise evident in the shots.

F4.2, ISO 500, 32mm, pop-up flash fired

An early shot which required fill-in flash as the strip light directly above meant Drew's face was in shadow. Although the aperture is wide the background is still reasonalbly in focus because of the short focal length and the close proximity of the Drew to the background. I feel shooting upwards works as the bike frame leads you into the shot and you can see Drew's face.

F4.5, ISO 800, 40mm, pop-up flash fired

Again this shot required fill-in flash. The bikes in the background give context to the shot but I am not so keen on the dumpbins which make the rest of the background too cluttered. Again I am shooting from below eye level as you would not see his face otherwise.

F4.5, ISO 450, 35mm, pop-up flash fired

This is my favourite from the shoot. I think Drew has relaxed sufficiently to look engrossed in his work, almost unaware I was still taking pictures. I like the way the light is catching the right side of his face but hate the artex ceiling and the edge of the stiplight showing by the saddle. Unfortunately, a better angle was not possible.

 

Defocusing the background using gaussian blur and converting to black and white in Photoshop helps focus attention on Drew. Below is another shot I think benefits from a black and white approach.

 

I think I have been successful in creating a 'contextual portait' of a bike mechanic that shows an expression of concentration and focus on the job in hand. He does however look very serious and it would have been nice to capture more of a smile.