Weekly Favorite Portraits showcase

We are back again with some more interesting emerging photographers, who are sharing their favorite images and some interesting facts about behind the scene of that portrait. We are also very thankful for the tons of great works that we receive every week.

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

This is one of several editorial photographs taken in Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile). I’m not going to invent a great story or anything. Our team wanted to portray the beauty and magic of the island, the spiritual connection with nature that exists there combined with fashion photography. It’s just to show the feminine beauty mixed with an incredible landscape. This can be displayed in the pictures and the fashion film that I’m currently sending.

The equipment used was a Canon 5D Mark II with an 85mm lens and a 24 / 70mm. all done with natural light. Working with natural light is what I like, you can have all kinds of lighting only with the passing of the hours. Makeup was made by Carolina Pizarro and costumes by Natalia Martini

Photographer: Patricio Mardones Diaz

Say Something

This portrait is one of my favorite photos I ever made. I called it “Say Something” by the same-named song. It’s a very emotional and personal, but also very quiet and peaceful portrait of a girl, with an emphasis on her eyes which are looking directly at the viewer. I think her gaze is powerful enough to convey a pure emotion that I was followed when I made this image. I believe in the power of eyes and their ability to tell more than a thousand words.

I made this portrait with Canon EOS 40D and a 50mm lens. I used only outdoor light because I think that no equipment can replace good natural light. In Photoshop I only shaped her eyes a bit and fixed color tones to make them more cold but still natural.

Photographer: Miomir Milic | His 500px profile

Self-Portrait

I combined my own photographic selfies with self-portraits of celebrated painters through the ages. In melding my own dog-tired face into each artist’s vision of himself. I took hundreds of selfies trying to match the poses, expressions, moods, and styles of each artist’s self-portrait. Using Photoshop and other digital tools, I melded photography and fine art into a mashup of both. It took me hundreds of digital attempts and countless false starts to get what I wanted.

Photographer: Chris Golson | His Facebook fanpage

Opium

This is my favorite portrait, Opium.

It’s a visual representation of the surreal serenity of the well used and enjoyed at the time, medieval medicine, milk of the poppy. It’s a dreamscape of a dream state.

The model, Charlotte Gale, 13 years old is sitting on her satin-cloaked father’s shoulders to get her above the poppy crop. The umbrella was made by myself and Charlotte’s mother, by stripping it of the material and weaving in the flowers to create the prop. The smoke was created by strapping on a red smoke pellet using tinfoil so it wouldn’t burn the plastic underneath on the frame.

I wanted to give more movement to this photograph as Charlotte couldn’t sway about much due to having to balance. To achieve this I added a tornado, photoshopped in all the billowing hair to the left of her, and added a little more smoke to the corner using brushes. I made the model paler to give her a doll-like look to further the fantasy and surreal aspect as I adore taking my images to a different realm! I always play with curves and as I often do, I made the shadows lighter and filled them in with blue, and brought in warmer colors to the highlights and more green to the mids.

This image was shot on my Canon EOS 550D in completely natural light. The location is a small poppy field outside the dump in my home town, not the most glamorous of locations but it proves that you don’t need to spend loads of money to be creative!

Photographer: Stephanie Pearl | Her Facebook fanpage

I don’t feel it anymore.

Description: Mario is a special guy. He has a lot of emotion and is able to share them with me when we go out taking pictures. Last time we discovered an abandoned place, which has been a swimming bath for a long time. In it, there was an empty pool and Mario lied down on the ground. I wanted to create an atmosphere of being underwater. That’s the reason why I wanted him to look straight into the sky. Airless with air.

I use a Canon 5D Mark III with a 50mm f1.4 lens, most of the time I shoot with f2, I like the fact that there’s enough sharpness but also enough blurred room for free interpretation and imagination. Location is mentioned in 1.)
I only shoot with available light and I started to work with Lightroom recently, where I often use VSCO presets or my own ones.

Photographer: Theresa Pewal | Her 500px Profile

Self-Portrait

My self-portrait which was shot in a forest in natural light, with Canon 60D, very little post-processing done: increased the contrast, changed the colors using Hue/Saturation.
Photographer: Vaida Abdul | Her Facebook fanpage

Innocence

I have decided to show you my latest image titled ‘Innocence’.This image is my entry for the August challenge for the Facebook Fine Art Photography group.

The theme was “New Beginnings’ it struck a chord with me and I knew exactly the type of image that wanted to create. New beginnings make me think of innocent newborn babies and animals. Two members of my family are pregnant at the moment, so I am surrounded! I wanted to communicate feelings of the innocence at birth and mother nature’s indifference in comparison. I wanted calmness with an element of danger. Fresh eyes looking out at the world with no concept of fear. You can read about the making of this image, including the speed edit video showing exactly how the wings were made over on my blog.

In brief, I bought the nest in a craft shop, then polystyrene eggs, we painted them pale brown then speckled them with a toothbrush. It was very messy! Then the cat, nest, and flowers we photographed together, then model was added in afterward. For the wings I bought individual feathers and photographed them one by one against a black backdrop, holding them with two sets of tweezers. I then masked them using an awesome new technique that I recently learned at a CreativeLive class hosted by Aaron Nace.

Photographer: Simon Woodward | His Facebook fanpage

52 weeks project

It´s hard to choose a favorite portrait but I think the one I like the most is my 13th picture of my 52 weeks project. It´s a self-portrait I took in the woods nearby. I consider myself a storyteller and I use my body to express feelings and adventures. What I like about this portrait is the expression, the mood, and the colors. It´s dark but you can feel that there is more. Is he killing her the next second or is it all about love and affinity? What do you think?

The photo was taken using a Nikon D90 with my beloved 50mm 1:1,4D Lens, lit by natural sunlight in the afternoon. In the post-procession, I expanded the picture and played with gradation curves, contrasts, and color balance. Also, I added a dark vignetting.

Photographer: Lena Steinke | Her Facebook fanpage

The Photo Book photos

I’m sending you a portrait of a girl who also happens to be my daughter and we like to do photo projects together. And this photo was the first one we did as a part of a project called “The Photo Book photos”. What is it about? Well, we make our own versions of classical photos. The original was taken by Harry Callahan of his wife Ellinor (and it’s not a version of U2:s Boy album cover). It’s fun doing things together with your child on equal terms.

The technical aspects. I used a Nikon D7000, a flash Nikon SB-700, a tripod to better control the composition, a white sheet over the bushes in the background. The photo was shot in daylight (late afternoon) and in raw format. Post-processing in Camera raw and Photoshop.
Photographer: Elakkanin | Her Facebook fanpage

Chronicles of a world unleashed

This is the photo id like to use: its a very personal one that is a strong representation of the magic that I always try to create in my photos. I shot the photo in my bedroom on a day that I was inspired by some vines that were in my garden. I brought them up to my room and began cello taping them onto my walls and placed them to create the feeling that they were coming from the character and then diffuses out, I had problems like bringing spiders and snails into my room which was a bit worrying but the show must go on! I blackened a window in my room with a black backdrop because it was sunny outside and there was too much light entering the scene then what I wanted.

I laid books to the side of the frame (which ended up getting cropped out) as extra details and had a bed sheet, pajamas, flashlight, and a huge old book as props. I shot with the torch being the main light that lit up the character’s face and book. I shot with the plan to have the character (myself) under the sheets like they couldn’t sleep because a storm kept them up so they found this book in an old chest and a world was unleashed.

Later in editing, I enhanced this idea by changing the colors to be more magical and also editing the lighting to create more contrast and the impression it’s at night. I added a lot more texture to create an antique feel, I also made the wall larger and reflect the bed.

Photographer: Thomas Oscar Miles | His Facebook fanpage

Silence

This is a recent self-portrait dear to me because of the overall simplicity I was going for this shot. The film strips and trees represent the medium and subjects I like to capture in photography.

The camera I’ve used for this shot was my canon 350D and I’ve done this shoot in my room. I’ve set up a white cloth as background and used a flash for better exposure. I’ve set my camera accordingly and took some test shots before getting the right position for the film strips right and in place. After I’ve done the shoot, my post-processing includes cleaning up some wrinkled areas in the background and adding the second photo of a silhouette of tree branches I took the other day to get a double exposure effect on my photograph in Adobe Photoshop.

Photographer: Richard John Pozon | His Facebook Profile

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