portraits

(My last post reminiscing about old pictures.)

One of the many good things about working for a newspaper was the variety of assignments. Each day brought different photography work and each day you met new people.

A few examples:

• I shot an Aerosmith concert on January 6, 1990. That was followed by two hours of standing in January winter weather photographing a late-night fire at the Polish consulate in Toronto.

• On June 24, 1996, I photographed a story about a group of homeless people. My next assignment was at one of Toronto’s most expensive hotels where an International Olympic Committee executive was being feted.

• I photographed Stephen Hawking at the University of Toronto on April 27, 1998. After this, I shot a rock concert by the Deftones.

• My assignments on October 29, 1999, were to photograph the Prime Minister of Hungary and then photograph a real witch (no joke) for a Halloween story.
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There are a few reasons why a photographer will shoot or crop a portrait very tightly:

1) Cut off distractions in the foreground or background. Sometimes the subject themselves might be wearing a distraction like text or logos on clothing, a shirt with an ugly colour or loud pattern, etc.

2) Dramatic effect. A tightly composed portrait emphasizes the person’s eyes and facial expression. An otherwise routine portrait can be made more attention-getting by cropping tightly.

3) Graphic effect. A tightly composed portrait can sometimes produce interesting lines or shape.
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Yet another post reminiscing about some old photos.

The pictures below were shot during various press conferences which were also recorded on video. But the moments captured in these pictures are not noticeable in the videos.

The power of photography is that it can capture and isolate one moment forever. Video flashes by at 30 frames per second and your brain barely notices any of those frames. Your brain doesn’t actually see video or motion but rather it sees in a series of still images and remembers only key frames.

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There’s a photography saying that goes something like: One out-of-focus picture is a mistake; ten out-of-focus pictures are an experiment; one hundred out-of-focus photos are a style.

A photographer will sometimes challenge themselves by looking for visual trends. For example:

• At a sports event, a photographer may do a series of photos of fans with painted faces.

• At a convention, a photographer might look for people doing selfies with their cell phone.

• During a political campaign, a photographer could do pictures of candidates holding babies.

A group of ordinary photos can seem more interesting if there’s a common theme or visual pattern.

Here’s a silly collection of images from a number of press conferences. The “theme” is that the people onstage couldn’t see the reporters asking questions.

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Indulge me as I reminisce about a few more photos and aimlessly fill another blog page.

The pictures below are all scanned film images. Each of these portraits, except for the last one, were done in about five minutes because that’s usually all the time a photographer got.

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