Will.
My friend Will, and his wonderful wife Mary, love to entertain at their home. And I understand why. They are just so good at it. Knowing that my better half is out of town this weekend they invited me and another good friend over for an extended happy hour with lots of fun food and beverages. They've invited me over often this Spring and we've been lucky with the weather so we get to sit outside in the middle of their vast garden, under strings of lights.
I am rarely without a camera and Will, a photographer of fame and merit, is more than willing to stop for a quick portrait. On Friday evening I was carrying my Q2 around with me and channeling some of the style I've seen from UK photographer Paul Reid. (look him up on YouTube).
Will was sitting at a counter facing into his kitchen and I liked the way the light flowed down his face. I asked him to lean forward for a few frames and fired off five or six shots with the camera set to f1.7 while using 1/60th of a second and auto-ISO. Some of my best portraits come from times when we are all happily socializing. And my friends are quite used to me having a camera around.
This photo started life as a color raw file and I did most of my meager post processing work in the color space before using a Lightroom Preset to convert the image to black and white. Or as we're now supposed to say, "monochrome."
The camera has built-in image stabilization and a wonderful lens. The lens goes a long way toward making me appear to be a better photographer than I otherwise might be.
Will has the same issue I do. He's always the one taking photographs of family and friends but rarely gets photographed himself. Sometimes the gift of an interesting portrait is of great value to the subject's family. And it's fun. I sent the image along to Mary and she really liked it.
Dinner parties are such a great event to photograph. Everyone is mostly happy and calm. Friends you've had for decades and decades are completely open to you exercising your craft. And the Q2 is weather resistant which is great for those times when someone opening a bottle of Champagne gets too carried away with the drama of the "Pop" and gets a few effervescent splashes on the camera.
The Q2 is helping to change my mind. To open it up to the potential of portraits made with wider and wider angle lenses.
Will is a wonderful subject and hanging out with him and his crew is a really keen way to spend a Friday evening in the Spring time. I'm so lucky to have so many close and long friendships. Makes life even better.
6 comments:
Your friend Will has a wonderful face. It looks like the kind of face which, in a dark or shadowy room, has its own light, if one looks. I get the feeling he's a person who's been places, and done things, and sometimes may even tell stories about some of it, too. It's also a really fine portrait. And though I normally hate the expression, it's a moment well captured.
He looks relaxed and contented, often a difficult thing to capture as people tend to put on their "being photographed" face and look tense and on edge when a camera appears. It helps that you are good friends and used to being around cameras. The square format and the angled pose make this more interesting for me. Great picture, monochrome gets my vote for portraits.
Your”casual” portraits are one of my favorite parts of your blog. Not only is the subject relaxed, the photographer is too. Keep the Q2 close.
Kirk we need to see more of your work like this, more posts like this. Bravo, man.
Very nice portrait. Would love to see more of this type of photography on your blog Kirk. Building photos are about as interesting to me as bird photos.Casual portraits are my favourites and I've always preferred them over posed studio shots. I've been using the 28mm focal length more and more lately and it's growing on me. I think I'd be happy with a Q2 as my primary camera. I'll be doing a lot more 28mm shooting this summer so we'll see how well I work with that focal length. A Q series camera would make a nice retirement gift to myself and allow me to scale back the number of cameras and lenses I currently have. Getting lighter is always a good thing.
Clearly no need for a dedicated monochrome camera. Not with results like this.
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