Notice anything different about this Portrait ? What if I was to say I took it upside down !

No, I’m not going mad. Remember those big square cameras, called medium format ? Well one of the traits of shooting with some medium format cameras used to be the fact you would see the image upside down in the view finder. Now you might see that as a disadvantage. But there is a flip side to it (sorry for pun). Landscape photographers found that by viewing the image upside down, they no longer concentrated on the small detail, but found their eye drawn to the overall composition of the shot. They used to this their advantage & produced beautifully composed photographs.

Try it for yourself. Take any photograph & turn it upside down. Look how your eye is now drawn to the composition of the photo, rather than the detail.

Well back to the subject in hand, this is how I actually took the photo :-

By taking the photo from this angle it provided 3 bonuses :-

1. The eye was drawn to the composition of the arms, hands & hair
2. The models eyes were forced to look upwards at the camera, producing a more flattering look
3. I didn’t invade the models space. Shooting the other way would mean standing over the model. A bit intimidating for some.

Anyway, hope you found that of some use. As for me, I still can’t decide which way up I like the photo !!

cheltenham portrait photography

cheltenham portrait photography

Click for

cheltenham portrait photography

cheltenham portrait photography

cheltenham portrait photography

& a slightly different shot to finish off

cheltenham portrait photography

Couples Portraits

Couples Portraits

Which do you prefer ?

See more photos of Karl taken by Gloucestershire Portrait Photographer, David James Williams here

gloucestershire portrait photographer

Cheltenham Photographer

Portrait

Cheltenham Portrait Photographer

This portrait was taken in Cheltenham, using just a single light, to add some drama to the end portrait.

When your subject is wearing glasses be extra careful with the positioning of the studio light, to avoid glare.   I usually find you need to place the light that little higher than normal, or ask the subject to lift the arms of the glasses just a tad off their ears, causing the glasses to point down slightly, thus avoiding glare.

The final portrait was toned in Sepia to add some warmth.

As Steve was relatively new to Studio lighting, we started with a single light setup & muggins here became the model <doh> .  Going for the dark moody, low key portrait, we used one light box to camera left & kept the power as low as possible to minimise bounced light.  Finally, we added a collapsible back drop to finish the portrait.

Cheltenham Portrait Photographer

For dog portraits, you only get limited time to keep a dogs attention, so be quick     I quite like the end shot, what do you think ?  Feel free to add a comment below

View some more shots here