Innholdsfortegnelse for 02/08/2022 i Amateur Photographer

Most of the billions of photos taken every day are of people, and most aren’t very good. This issue is dedicated to helping to ensure that yours are not among them. Portraiture means different things to different people – there’s a whole discussion about that in our interview on page 36 – but we’re using a wide sense of the word and have assembled a broad range of approaches. Getting great shots of people isn’t easy – you need social skills as well as technical and creative ones – but it’s perhaps the most rewarding genre to shoot because if you do it well your subjects will love your work and may even hang it on the wall. Whether you enjoy street portraits taken in natural light or elaborate studio-based…

Most of my time these days is spent on developing my own book projects, which usually involve photographing people who are not in the public eye. However, I still take on commissions to photograph well-known people who interest me and who would further augment my professional portfolio. One of those shoots was with the TV presenter, conservationist and author, Chris Packham. Chris has been presenting nature and wildlife programmes for the BBC, National Geographic and Animal Planet since the mid-1980s, and most recently appeared on the BBC’s Springwatch. He has also become well-known for animal rights campaigning, as well as an autobiographical documentary in which he talked about being autistic and his youthful passion for punk rock. The shoot took place at his home in the New Forest in early…

A compelling and comprehensive guide to the photographic portrait, Face Time is a new book by Philip Prodger. In it, he expertly walks us through a history of the genre, from photography’s invention right up to the present day. He does this with care, consideration and a decent dash of humour to boot. Currently a Senior Research Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art, his varied career as a curator in a number of prestigious institutions perfectly places him to write the book, maybe none more so than his stint as Head of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Earlier this month, I was able to put my questions about a genre which is described by Philip as ‘one of the most difficult undertakings in art’ to…

Although Diana has ‘only’ been a portrait photographer since September 2019, she has already built a solid reputation; indeed, her stunning image of model Astrid graced the cover of our 28 May issue. ‘I first got into photography when working for a building company as they asked me to shoot interiors,’ Diana recalls. ‘But I was much more interested in being a portrait photographer!’ She turned pro in 2020 and used the extended lockdowns to her advantage, honing her Photoshop retouching skills. Soon after the restrictions ended, Diana began to teach her processes. ‘I only use Photoshop, not even Lightroom,’ she adds. ‘I didn’t understand layers or masking or anything else much at the beginning, but persevered. Photoshop can be scary at the beginning but once you understand the basics…

Technique LENS TIPS FOR VIDEO Today’s cameras enable us to shoot and record the kind of high-res video footage that was only a dream 10-15 years ago. Even more modest cameras offer 4K features these days, meaning you can capture the world in detail. However, the camera is only half of the equation. Without a decent lens, it’s all for nothing, and you could return home and find you’ve still ended up with disappointing footage. A great lens for video should be able to work well with your camera’s autofocus system to keep subjects sharp; it should also offer you the ability to get more creative by allowing you to reduce the depth of field in your frame. The truth is though that not every lens is up to…

Lunar Exploration Suit View of a prototype design for a two-piece lunar exploration suit (or spacesuit), Farmingdale, New York, 1960. The suit includes a tripod and a built-in seat. Space suits had been designed since as early as the 1930s, but it would be 1961 before a human – Yuri Gagarin – would actually wear a suit in space (the SK series). The US followed very shortly after in the same year, with John Glenn wearing a Navy Mark IV suit. Unsurprisingly, neither of those suits bear much resemblance to the prototype pictured here. The Getty Images Hulton Archive is one of the world’s great cultural resources. Tracing its origins to the founding of the London Stereoscopic Company in 1854, today it houses over 80 million images spanning the birth…

Rory Lewis Rory won the Portrait of Britain award for four years in a row and is a National Portrait Gallery BAME artist. He also runs courses and mentorship programmes. See www.rorylewis.studio and @rorylewisofficial on Instagram. David Morrisey ‘Described by the British Film Institute as one of the most versatile English actors of his generation, David Morrissey is noted for the meticulous preparation and research he undertakes for his roles – you may have recently seen him in the hit BBC drama series, Sherwood,’ Rory explains. ‘I captured David’s portrait for a new project entitled Selah, drawing inspiration from the Old Master painters such as Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Titian and Ribera. I have attempted to masterfully recreate the light, atmosphere and tones of classical portrait paintings. ‘I like to call this…

Round Five Best of British In Great Britain, we like to pride ourselves on our eccentricities. Traditions that sometimes go back centuries may look frankly bizarre to those who weren’t brought up in this country, but to us they seem perfectly normal. But these aren’t the only things that make this small island what it is. Our coastline provides not only beauty but also an opportunity to enjoy our beaches and the notoriously fickle days of summer – and sometimes even winter, too. It’s worth acknowledging, however, that in recent years we have been a divided country, too. Although some might argue photographs of this don’t reflect us at our ‘best’, nobody can deny it makes a great subject for photography. We can go from rural idyll to urban…

Chris Porsz Chris Porsz began his interest in photography while hitchhiking across Europe and North Africa in the early 1970s. He started shooting images of people on the streets of Peterborough in the early 1980s. Years later this led to a newspaper column and an ambitious project that saw him photographing the same people again, sometimes over 40 years apart. www.chrisporsz.com Chris Porsz’s project dates back to the early 1980s when he ‘wandered around the streets of Peterborough with my camera’. But the arrival of children, and a busy career as a paramedic, put his photography on hold for almost 25 years. He admits he, ‘sort of fell out of love with photography’, but his passion was rekindled in 2009 when he sent some old images of Peterborough in the…

THANDIWE MURIU It makes no difference how deep and meaningful your intentions are in your photography if no one looks at your pictures. So many art photographers forget this, and make images so visually dull that no one gives them a second glance to notice the hidden metaphor, higher-plane reflection and intellectual genius buried in the pixels. To get your message across through photography, the first job of your pictures is to draw attention so that the viewer has a fighting chance of benefiting from your globally transformative brainwaves. Someone who has the right idea is Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu, who lives and works in Nairobi. Her pictures are so bright, dramatic, eye-bursting and attention-seeking I suspect we would know one was hanging in the building even if we were…

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE From Ali to Bowie, Keanu to Pacino, Greg Gorman has photographed pretty much everyone in the worlds of entertainment, art, sport and music. Over a long career his work has graced the pages and covers of the likes of Time, LIFE, Vogue, Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire and Vanity Fair. For the past few years Greg’s lighting of choice has been Rotolight, a brand he discovered during a photo shoot in Canada. ‘I was in Toronto working on a project, and had been using big, heavy focusable strobe lights that were hard to travel with,’ he recalls. ‘One free afternoon I went to visit a camera store and said “show me what you’ve got in high-end LED continuous lights.” They showed me a few of the options, including the…

Photo Critique Krass Clement, born in Copenhagen in 1946, is a self-taught photographer. He graduated as a film director from the Danish Film School in 1973, and when it became evident to him that his future was not to be in film, he returned to the photography he had practised since his youth. In Belfast, Clement revisits his work over 30 years on, gathering 114 unpublished images and carefully placing them in sequence, offered without caption or comment. The impression I get of the book as a whole (although I have nothing to base this on other than what I see) is that Clement works quickly, moving through a place unobtrusively. Looking at this book he specialises in furtive glances down urban streets, glimpses of children playing with their dogs…

AP picture of the week Sony Alpha 7 III, Samyang 85mm f/1.4, 1/400sec at f/1.4, ISO 250 Karl told us, ‘This was from my first ever portrait photoshoot! I met with Rosie at a great location in Bedfordshire called Rowney Warren Wood. While we were walking around getting some great shots I noticed how the light hit her eyes and instantly had the idea for this shot. I shot this using manual focus and edited it Adobe Lightroom. The model’s name is Rosie Bruce.’ Instagram: @xxii.photos Model’s Instagram: @rosiebrucexx #appicoftheweek Win! To congratulate the AP Pic of the Week winner, Fujifilm is giving the winner a £25 voucher* to spend on any photo prints or gifts at myFUJIFILM.co.uk, so that they can print their image any way they like! Simply…

COMPETITION Round seven People From the traditional to the unconventional, inside or outside the studio, whether you choose to make yourself the subject or capture others, we’re looking for a portrait that tells a story and gives us an insight into the person portrayed. Great people pictures can be found in all walks of life – it’s how you capture the subject that draws viewers in. For inspiration, take a look at the work of David Bailey, Arnold Newman, Mary Ellen Mark, Jane Bown, Rineke Dijkstra and more. Your guest judge Your guest judge for Round Seven, People, is Denise Maxwell. A full-time photographer for over ten years, Denise left her job in the NHS to specialise in events and portrait photography, but now works in other fields, including…

In 2012, when London-born photographer Arteh Odjidja was visiting Moscow for an Ozwald Boateng fashion show, he met a young African man called Abdulay who had settled in the capital (via Portugal) after migrating from the west African island of São Tomé and Príncipe. ‘When in Russia, and an obvious foreigner, many people make you feel like you’re a stranger. People literally stare at you and your mind fills in the blanks as to what they’re thinking. You feel like that a lot, and I said to myself, if I’ve been here three days and feel like this, what must it be like for Abdulay who’s lived here for two years? That’s when I dived into his story,’ explains Arteh. Galvanised by his meeting with Abdulay – and disturbed by…

Anybody with a half-decent smartphone is probably already more than aware of its prowess for capturing off-the-cuff shots. But, when used in a considered way, they’re also superb for portraiture. Most modern smartphones have some kind of portrait mode, designed to mimic the effects of shooting with a wide-aperture lens. The results from these modes, powered by clever AI and algorithms, have become ever more impressive. A lot of smartphones also have full manual modes, which is useful too. Most high-end smartphones also include short telephoto lenses, giving you a close approximation to shooting with something like a classic 50mm or 85mm optic. In this piece, I asked three photographers who have all been using their smartphones to excellent effect to show us exactly what can be achieved by using…

111 cameras listed & rated Cameras Cameras come in three types: DSLRs with optical viewfinders, mirrorless models with electronic viewing, and compact cameras with non-interchangeable lenses Handgrip DSLRs traditionally have relatively large handgrips, while many mirrorless models have much smaller grips to keep size down. However, some can accept accessory grips to improve handling with larger lenses. Lens mount Each camera brand uses its own lens mount, and mirrorless cameras use different lenses to DSLRs even from the same brand. However, mirrorless models can often use DSLR lenses via a mount adapter. Controls Entry-level cameras tend to have simple, easy-to-understand controls, while more expensive models add lots of buttons and dials to give quick access to settings. Viewfinder The biggest difference between DSLRs and mirrorless cameras is that the…