Portraiture Shots

To get the best out of my portraiture photography, I decided to go and shoot a friend's band. This was on the 29th of December when they were releasing their E.P! They were very welcoming and grateful for the pictures. Also after looking up some techniques at this website i had the confidence to shoot the band in full manual.

Therefore I took my Canon 600D to shoot with and my 4GB SDHC Memory card and two lenses. These were my 18-55mm IS Canon lens and my 70-300mm IS /Macro Tamron Lens.

I had to be aware of quite a few precautions such as slipping as it was in a pub with many drinks, tripping over wires, being pushed into the band. Also i chose not to take the tripod as there would be too many people and not much space as the camera would've been pushed over.

Therefore i ended up taking around 565 pictures within the 4 hours. These were of 2 bands - The 5 Days Of November & Dizzy Missile. Then when I had came back home, i had narrowed the lot down to 74 images. Then I had a try and edited them to give them a vintage look. But they did not suit the theme of it being a band shoot so I just kept the originals. Then I narrowed the selection to 33 images Here are a few of those images...

I edited these pictures using photoshop cs5 using a mac. Some of the techniques i used to edit these were: adjusting the curves, adjusting the vibrance, adding a fade around the close-ups, cropping and changing the saturation. But i chose not to keep them like that because I would have lost out on the band style atmosphere and colours.

This image is a good portrait i shot as it shows the musician in a glaze at the crowd and also because he is toned and exposed correctly at the scene and with the theme. 

This is also a good shot I took because The composition has the rule of thirds involved. It has the fans on the sides whilst having a viewpoint of behind the crowd.

I thought this photograph was a well structured shot too because you have the guitarist focussed and the drummer out of focus at the back but you also have a very good angle to the shot.

This was one of my favourite shots because it has the lead singer in full focus and then the composition of the two other guitarists concentrating. This again, has the rule of thirds in place.

I thought this was a very good portrait because the shot included motion and a very dramatic shot of the lead guitarist. Also the background of the scene was fussy which suited the theme.

I thought this was also a very decent shot as the drummer was in full focus where as his kit was out of focus. The back wall also added the nice touch of filling the scene.

This shot of the lead guitarist is excellent because he has full focus on his face with perfect lighting of the atmosphere and also you have the motion of his hand struming the guitar. Not to mention the composition includes the microphone.

Seeming to be a very characteristic shot, this photo shows the band culture with the highly recognised converse pumps but also you have the wires and leads of the amps wiring around his feet.