Portrait Analysis One - The First of Many

Introduction

This is my first official blog entry, and hopefully the first of many entries into a series in which I review and analyze different portraits. I will occasionally review my own photos and occasionally I’ll review others’. The plan at the moment is to discuss what I like and what I would do differently, but this, and the structure of these posts, may change as we go. I’ll review a self portrait for this first entry for a couple reasons. One, I can take this opportunity to explain and demonstrated the structure of these analyses, and two, I won’t be biased by the fact that there is someone else in the image or some other photographer that created the image. Of course, an argument could be made that there is bias in the fact that I am the one in the image.

Currently, this is my favorite self portrait because I think it communicates my intended style quite well. As far as portraits go, I think this is the closest to what I’d like to accomplish in my shoots with clients. The inspiration for this self portrait came from the work of Ivan Weiss (@ivanweiss.london), a talented London-based photographer that inspires me often.

Structure

Categories

I’ll use categories to discuss each image. The number of categories may change over time and they may differ between images because there might be different aspects that stand out more than others depending on the image. Examples of categories are lighting, color, and composition.

Subjectivity and Technical Knowledge

The discussions will include only my opinions and perspectives that suit my taste at the time of writing the review. My thoughts could change over time - in fact, I expect them to. Furthermore, I hope to minimize the required technical knowledge to understand the review and to participate in the discussion. I personally don’t have very much technical knowledge and I don’t think it is relevant to most discussions that we’ll be having.

Analysis

Lighting

Lighting in this image is quite straight forward. I was in my living room so the light was difficult to control, but I sat with a white wall to my right (camera left) and a small white reflective umbrella as the key light about 30 degrees to my left. I like the simplicity and the dimension created by the shadows. I like the density of the shadows as well. If I did this photo again, I would add a hair light or a rim light behind myself to create better separation between me and the backdrop.

Color

I love the colors in this image, they are earthy and complimentary. The image has a monochromatic feel to it in the shirt, the table and the skin tones. I like the sweater, but perhaps I would remove the blue from it in post so that the only colors present are shades of tan/brown. The dark swirls in the tabletop are nice, but I would like to know what the image looks like if there were a beige tablecloth. It might not work at all, but I’d like to know.

Composition

For what I was trying to accomplish, the composition is nearly perfect. A recent addition to my compositions is to include more negative space than is typical of traditional portraits and headshots. I took a photo recently of a friend and model (@dakotaiversin). You can see that he is quite small in the frame. If I were to redo the self portrait of our analysis today, I would add more negative space around myself, but not quite as much as with the photo of Dakota, since there is no shadow of interest on the backdrop in the self portrait above.

Conclusion

Overall, I am quite pleased with the self-portrait we discussed today. The color, and composition communicate my intended style, and the lighting is fun and creative. There are a few things I would do differently if I were to recreate this image, but I don’t think I’ll try to do that any time soon.

Check in next week when I analyze the photo of Dakota above. It’s in my top three photos that I’ve created, and I’m excited to discuss it.