Ivan Radman Expressing your Vision

Assignment: Collecting

Tutor: Les Monaghan 22 Oct 2015

Heads For this assignment I could choose between three subjects: 1. Crowds, which I thought

could be suitable for me because I have some practice in this field; 2. Views, I skipped this

because I wanted more interaction. 3. Heads, finally I chose this topic because it offered

interaction and I thought it would be more challenging. An additional reason why I chose

to take headshots is that a year ago I had an idea do take portraits of friends from my

teenage years back home in Zagreb. It was fun shooting in the pub where we hung out

years ago and I was satisfied with the results. This time round, I wanted to see if I could

do a similar thing, but with people that I did not know.

The first problem I was confronted with was that I had to find a group of people who are

willing to pose for me. I had an idea to offer to take headshots of my wife's work

colleagues, who are translators, free of charge. This way they would get their photographs

for business purposes, or other, and I would have the material for my assignment. They

were happy with that idea.

For this project I looked at the work of several artists:

Dan Winters – whose book (Road to Seeing) I bought when I was looking for street

photographers’ autobiographies and the portraits in this book were so interesting that I

wanted to try that out. At that time, it seemed to me that after the dynamic and non-stop

buzz of street photography, it was a logical next step to deliberately choose a more passive

approach of having a person in front of me interacting and trying to create a pleasant

atmosphere to get a model to relax. It seemed challenging.

http://www.danwintersphoto.com/

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Richard Awadon – His portraits are so free, so spontaneous and so light, as if he knew the

people that he shot inside out. “Click! In other words, I'm in a very controlling position, and I can

bring... and I've already... if the camera's on you, your face is very concentrated. You're listening. You don't

know what I'm going to say next, and now you're smiling. All these things are the things I work with.”

http://www.avedonfoundation.org/

Michael Jang – His punk approach to photography is very interesting, not in a rude way, it

is just a bit twisted. We can see that in his portraits, the models are nicely positioned, the

light is perfect, gray background, everything is in its place and then there is that little twist

in a gesture of a model that makes the photograph perfect.

http://www.michaeljang.com/portfolio/photos_summer_weather.html

Settings: Nikon D600 with wireless Flash Trigger, 70-300 lens (ISO 200, 100 mm, f/4,5,

1/160 sec), a tripod and a flash.

My initial idea was to have a model in front of a bookshelf filled with dictionaries and

translation books. The day was cloudy and there was not enough light coming through the

windows. Having the flash did help to get enough light on to faces, but I struggled with

sharp shadows that it made on the faces of models and that narrowed my possibilities of

positioning the figures. I needed to move the camera up and down so that my viewpoint

was always on the eye level of the person in front of the lens, that way I got the same

angle of the faces. The fact that I used the same background and the same angle for the

shots highlights the idea that the photos form a series.

Working with people is really demanding, trying to loosen them up and to avoid that

horrified smile is a skill of its own. Now I understand what I have been reading, that in

order to take a good portrait you need to talk to the model 90% and shoot just 10% of the

time. I started the conversation with a handshake and by introducing myself to the model.

I insisted that no other colleagues of theirs were inside the room while I was shooting so

that each model could focus on our communication. Then I explained what I wanted to

have in the background, where they should stand and that they should look at the lens.

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While I was preparing my shot, I tried to talk to them about anything, from the weather to

music or a particular piece of jewellery they had, so they would not feel strange in the

silence while I was pointing the lens at them. Since I had a camera on a tripod, I could not

focus automatically but manually and I was afraid that I would lose the sharpness in the

eyes. That is why I took five to ten shots per person.

In the postproduction, I lowered the clarity, cleaned the dust with spot removal,

brightened the eyeballs just a bit, desaturated and brightened the teeth and darkened the

background to soften the flash glow.

I think that this project could be improved with proper soft lights and by having a studio

where I could prepare what would be in the background and how the lighting would be.

Also, having some background music would help to loosen the models and me as well. I

must mention that this time I had models that spoke the same language as I do and I

wonder how different it would have been if we could not have communicated that easily.

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