Portraiture?

When I first started photography I thought that I would like to be a forensic photographer my thoughts on this quickly changed as I decided that I would find this too difficult to deal with. As I progressed through my national diploma I began to favour portraiture. The only problem with this is that I find it hard to talk to people and direct them, however I feel that the past two projects have helped me a lot with this issue as both of projects have made me go out and talk to people. 

Firstly on 103 - Cover Story, we where asked to create an author portrait of someone that was not on the course. We had to go out and find a good character that would be wiling to have there picture taken. Seeing as I didn't know that many people in the Plymouth area that would be willing to have there photograph taken at first I found this challenging. But then I asked a friends older brother who was willing to have his photograph taken, and was also very generous with his time and let me visit 3 times to photograph him. 

The second project that has helped me is our current project 104 - Audience in the Community, this project has meant that we have had to go out and talk to people to give ourselves a project to work on that will create interesting images. As I have previously said I went out with the RNLI and took there portraits this was more free and I liked just going and taking there photograph without telling them what to do and worrying about lighting equipment etc. I felt better doing these portraits rather then the ones I did in 103 because I felt like I wasn't under as much pressure this time.

I intend to continue working on my portraiture skills. I hope to create my own style and would love one day to be as good as someone like RANKIN.