I have a sort of existential dread and cold sweat that comes over me when I think about telling models (or indeed the poor friends and family) that end up in front of my camera what to do. So when portraiture came up in the course there was a little panic. This is probably the only time the coronavirus has been helpful as I could mostly work with people I knew to get the work done.
My poor mother… She hasn’t quite gotten over the shame of wandering round the building we’ve not long moved to dressed in my Harry Potter cosplay robe. Each of these images had briefs of their own. The self portrait is built of 6 different images and was almost a bit of a cheat. I didn’t want to turn my camera on myself directly, at that time anyway, so built it out of old selfies. The thing is I can take good shots of people if they don’t know it.
None of these were posed…..And I almost prefer these to formal, posed images. Heck “The Shoe Seller” is a bit of a portfolio fixture at this point. I accept that there’s a definite need for images that are posed. It’s maybe just not my thing just now. Need to work on it though because I’ll need to do a studio shoot or two when I get back into the college buildings.









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