Taking a portrait of someone is very difficult. Just because we know that person well, does not mean it is easy to take good portraits. Good portrait expresses their characteristic naturally which means we have to be very careful not to make the model nervous or serious so that they will not express their social face (meaning fake facial expression such as a feigned smile).
In this post, I decided to do portrait of my friend, Shintaro because we’ve been in the same class for two years and I feel that we are becoming close friend recently. I call him Shin just because it is short and easy to pronounce. Moreover, he is little bit shy at first but when you get to know him, he is kind and delightful person who is persistent in every field that he has interests. I don’t know a lot about his interests so I decided to take pictures by asking some questions such as “what do you like?” and “please choose a pose that best describes you.” Here are the pictures that I was able to catch.
One in the right answers the first question. He made an image of reading books. By taking close-up photo like this enable us to see face clearly. In contrast, I depicted second picture a full-length portrait (one in the left and answers the second question). By showing his whole body this time made it more clear what he really looks like and his love of snowboard. Furthermore, the background, brick allow his fashionable clothes to stands out and makes casual images. In addition, I was talking to him while I took pictures so his looks more relax than nervous. However, I felt I can do better if I had other strategies because he has other unique characteristic (please see pictures below) as well and I think it will be wonderful if I were to draw out these image in a short period of time.
Again, taking good portrait is very difficult thing to do. It is due to the complexity of catching his or her atmosphere that best describes them. But, I realized that, at the same time portraits are interesting to take because it allows people to explore new self.
