Weekly Favorite Portraits Showcase

We are back again with some more interesting emerging photographers, who are sharing their favorite images and some interesting fact about behind the scene of that image.

Few of them had been successfully running their 365 project on Flickr so make sure to follow them!

That Red Dress

“That Red Dress” I found this amazing, old, tattered and unbelievably full fluffy red lace dress and had to have it. It took weeks for me to actually get the chance to use it, though. My model, Natacia Wiggington had a very limited schedule and it seemed my schedule always clashed with hers. I was driving around town one day and saw this amazing field. The flowers were just blooming for spring, the grass was high and it was stunning. All I could think was “I NEED to shoot that red dress in this field, today.”

So, when I got home I got a hold of Natacia to see if she was available for a completely unplanned, last-minute shoot – and for once the stars aligned! We spent about an hour in the field snapping various poses, I got so many wonderful images from this session. This one, however, was my favorite. Everything about it was perfect.

This shot is 100% natural light, I didn’t use anything other than the setting sun. Nikon D3200, 85mm 1.4 – I really didn’t need to do too much in post-processing to achieve the finished look. Just a small amount of blur around the edges pulled back the greens, popped the yellows and reds, sharpening in certain spots and a bronze darkening layer turned down to about 50% opacity.

Photographer: Shay Curenton | Her Facebook Fanpage

This is a portrait of myself with my dog Betty. Betty loves going on photo adventures with me, and she especially loves being in the shots! So I planned out this artistic type of photo I could do with her and I am really proud of how it turned out! I used a tripod, and a ten-second timer on my camera. Just enough time to get in the shot.

I usually always take photos at sunset or early morning. That is the best time for natural, soft lighting.

I use a Canon Rebel T3i, and a 35mm lens. I adjust the tones of the photo in Lightroom.

Photographer: Aimee Anderson | Her Facebook Fanpage

For me it looks thoughtful, but happy with this beautiful smile – I like the emotions there!

Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 85mm 1.8 II, outdoor, only available light

Photographer: Luisa Brocke | Her Facebook Fanpage

Dance Your Heart Out!

The photo was taken on the Millenium Bridge in London during sunrise. It was definitely worth getting up at 4 am to get the perfect shot I envisioned in my mind. Sophie Wright is the director and a dancer of The London Ballet Company <http://thelondonballetcompany.com/> and we have been working on a series of projects for a few months now. I love how passionate she is about ballet and she totally amazed me with her dancing moves during our shoot!

She taught me a lot about willpower and never giving up until you get it perfect. Passion does change everything. And of course, the empty city added a lot of extra sparkle to this image, too.

These kinds of ballet poses are not really static ones, I found it easier and better to capture the full movement which lasted only for a few seconds because you can’t stand on your tiptoes for long to balance your body. So I had to be very quick to capture the best position of both her arm and leg before she started lowering them again. I think the photo turned out really nice and became one of my recent favorites.

Shooting during sunrise (and sunset) always provides me with the most gorgeous and dreamy tones that I love for my photos. In London, I find it rather challenging to forecast the weather in advance and plan accordingly for my shoots, so it’s a real treasure to capture such moments. I used a Nikon D700 with a 24-70 mm f2.8 lens, natural light only. The image didn’t need too much editing, for the basics I used Lightroom (white balance and exposure), then I played around with the colors a bit in CS5.

Photographer: Rita Zlatnik | Her Facebook Fanpage | Flickr profile

Heart in a cage

“Have you ever locked up to your emotions? Yes, you have done that. We do that every day. We know exactly how we feel, but, for some reason, we can’t say it.

This is my latest self-portrait photo. It was taken on my balcony a few days ago. I was watching the sun go down and then I noticed a wonderful moment when the sun rays merge with the shadows on the floor. I pictured myself inside a cage, because of my feelings and moods those days. I knew that it was the right time for its realization.

I have used 2 photos. One of the cage and another one of myself. Also, I had to add some new background in order to make it look like in my imagination. It was quite complicated, but I never give up. In the next 5-6 hours I had real fun while experimenting in Photoshop with colors and sizes. I always do!

I haven’t used any flashlights or filters. It’s a natural sunset light. I have used a tripod because I’m taking my self-portraits all alone.

Photographer: Vesna Tiricovska | Her Facebook profile

The Man Who Saw Through Nature

The title of the picture is ‘The Man Who Saw Through Nature’

In this series I try to symbolize the connection between humans and nature, through surreal elements I was able to literally connect both of them together, reinforcing the idea that we are one. We need to be reminded of how important that connection is and that we should live in harmony with nature, instead of damaging it.

I used a Canon 60D for this picture with a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens. I was able to create this picture by combining two pictures together, by simply manipulating the eye on the tree bark, my inspiration was that the tree bark already had a part that looked like an eye to me. Natural lighting was used for this picture and I used myself as a model.

Photographer: Bassam Allam | His Facebook Fanpage

Tessa is a genuine life enthusiast, a queen in the kitchen, and an incredible storyteller. I wanted to portray her out of the frenetic contest I usually see her in. That evening we were not in a hurry, we had no schedule and no pressure. The result was a series of images with a natural and dreamy atmosphere.

Natural light is very important to me. The sun was perfect that evening, as it had this purple hue. My camera is a Canon EOS 600D and I was using an EF-S18-135mm lens.

Photographer: Juliette Van Eijsden | Her Facebook Fanpage

Periapsis

The image was quite a step out of the ordinary for me as I usually shoot with really small apertures, normally f10 and I often try to the full figure when I shoot my images, so this crop, which happened in the post, was quite a challenge for me compositionally.

Before I edited it, I studied cinematic color grading and film stills. In the end, I decided to go along with the blue/green/teal color scheme that I’ve seen to have adopted within my last few images as I feel that it gives this image somewhat of a consistent flow with the rest of my work as well as giving the image a doomed, gloomy vibe.

I shot the image with a Canon 60D with a 50mm 1.8 lens. My camera settings were: Shutter Speed- 4 seconds, Aperture- f5, the lighting was just natural, straight from the telephone box and the whole shoot took about 10-15 minutes!

Photographer: Aaron Sehmar | His Facebook Fanpage

Escondido

This photograph takes part in “Escondido”, a self project of mine. Escondido in Spanish means “hidden” and in fact, all photos have in common something hidden. This one is a self-portrait taken into my house with a DSLR Canon 1100D with no post-production.

I played with the sunlight and shadows on the wall paying attention to perspective in order to create a graphic and geometric image. I worked hard to find out the right head position and the right angle, but at the same time, it was funny!

Photographer: Alessandra Montis

Give Me Light

The photo is part of a whole series that I started months ago..in a bad period. The entire series is called “give me light”. For me it was a way to get out of a bad period and take refuge in the spaces of light of a new home and to be able to slowly familiarize with a new city, getting used to the change of life. For this motivation, for me, the entire series, and not just this photo, has a special meaning. Is the demonstration that photography can
help me :).

On the technical side, I used a Canon 7D to shoot this photo with a 10-22mm lens. The photo was taken at the same times of the other images, self-portraits in a natural light that was filtering through the curtains of the window.

Photographer: Elisa Imperi | Her Facebook Fanpage

Release

This image portrays a particular message for me; a particular memory that I wanted to document. Exams had just finished and I hopped on my bike as soon as I could, riding out far into the countryside where everything felt much calmer and slower. This photo represents the feeling of freedom and relief after getting through a challenging time, whether that’s work, exams or at home, and the feeling of being able to release all your worries and concerns about it once it’s over.

I wanted to reflect the tranquility of the rural setting; how much it contrasts with the frantic nature of modern living – an antidote to the stresses of every day.

I set up my camera on a remote shutter on a tripod, facing into the sun to silhouette the figure. The sunset and paper planes were shot at the same place, but I combined all the separate shots in post, lowering the contrast a little to give it the faded effect it has.

Camera: Canon EOS 60D, EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 lens.

Photographer: Harry Dunkerley | His Flickr profile

To keep myself alive

About this image that I named “To keep myself alive”, I’m very very proud because of a couple of things. First, this image represents my constant effort for keeping myself in touch with my creative side. I just have Sundays to shoot my concepts, so I have to organize my weeks in the way that my friends, models, the props, everything I’m gonna be using is ready for those Sundays. Is harder now because I just got a Monday to Saturday job, so lately I’ve been feeling very tired, I have to fight against that to keep fluent workflow. As I describe this image,

I’m so thirsty to create, but I can’t depend too much on external things, I am the one to have to keep feeding myself to keep my imagination alive.

This image is the result also of one of my main goals for this year, to give a workshop. This is one of the images resulting from that workshop, so double the proud! The settings were very simple. I placed a black fabric behind my model, 2 mustard yellow fabrics, 2 strings of yarn that a friend was holding for me, some water for the hand, and the sardines I took them like 2 months ago. I tend to expand my frame so I can print larger, so 9 photos in total, all combine in Photoshop. Some contrast, some redness in the eyes and the lips… placing the sardines at the end of the yarn and that’s it.

For all of my images, I use my very old friend, a Sony A33, with my lovely 50 1.8. It’s a window light (most of the time I only use natural light.. but sometimes is fun to play with flashlights and other stuff). I’m including the image where I was placing the different photos in Photoshop :)

Photographer: Carlos Bracho | His Facebook Fanpage

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