I’m out with my Olympus DSLR again and today it’s the portrait module from Ben Hawkins’ book, The Complete Beginner’s Photography Course. That includes a portrait of hands, so I set up a mirror and photographed my ‘all-fingers-and-thumbs’ method of holding the camera.
For older gnarly hands like mine Ben suggests going for black and white and adding a bit of grain.
Pet Portraits
Our next challenge was pet portraits, although challenge is hardly the right word as it would be impossible to take a bad photo of Bertie.
“Does he mind having his photograph taken?” I asked the woman at the next table in the Little Owl cafe, RSPB St Aidans.
“He loves it!” she replied showing me her phone with Bertie filling the home screen.
In the book Ben Hawkins suggests setting the shutter of your camera to silent when photographing pets and you can see that Bertie was getting a tad suspicious by the time I took this, the second photograph.
Add Context
We’re asked for a portrait with the figure in context so as we sat in the Rivers Meet Cafe in Methley, I couldn’t help thinking that the busy sewing room, with the Monday morning class hard at work, would be a brilliant setting. I got what I was after straight away, or I thought I had when I checked the photo on the camera’s flip-up screen. It was only when I got it on the big screen back home that I realised that I’d caught my model mid blink. Moral: always take several shots.