Portrait Photography Basic Tips

We run a Portrait Photography course the next one starts on March 1st. Our course covers all you need to understand about natural light portraits, we cover finding the right light, modifying it to suit your purposes, camera settings, subject preparation and posing, environmental portraits, candid portraits and all the other bits you need. If you can’t wait until the 1st March for our course to start this on line tutorial will give you some basics to consider

“Are you looking for portrait photography tips so that you can improve your picture taking skills?

At first thought, portrait photography would seem easy, yet the results are often disappointing.

Many of our pictures often include people, and whether you are photographing a model, taking a family photo, or capturing some candid shots while on vacation, you have probably discovered that great photography is a little more than just pointing a camera and pushing a button.

In fact, a really good photo should convey the subject’s character and personality, and communicate something distinct or identifiable about who they are as a person. Following a few key tips will help you learn how to take great portraits so you will never be disappointed again.”….MORE

©Keith Barnes

Nick Drake and the Strange Face Project

My two loves throughout my life have been music and photography. One of my earliest teenage memories is sitting on the floor in my friend Lynne’s house listening to Nick Drake. Her brother was the first person I had met whose life was dominated by his record collection and through him I found Nick Drake and many others.

Michael Burdett has such an interesting story and it is revealed in The Guardian by Laura Barton.

A lost recording by the late singer has been turned into a UK-wide photography project.

“One summer evening in the late 1970s, Michael Burdett was scavenging through a skip behind Island Records HQ in London. He was a teenager, employed as a postboy at the label, and had been given permission to hunt through all the discarded demos for tapes he could record over in the studio he was setting up at home.

An object caught his eye. “A scruffy little tape,” he recalls. “On the front, in felt tip, it said ‘Nick Drake‘ and on the back ‘Cello Song’. And at the bottom were the words ‘With Love’ and two kisses. I knew Nick’s material; he’d been dead five years. I couldn’t let it go to the dump. So I took it and kept it.”………”and suddenly after 30 years he knew what he wanted to do: photograph people listening to it.

“For the next year and a half,” he says, “I kept the camera and the recording with me wherever I went. I approached people at random and ended up photographing tattooists, homeless people, florists, mountaineers, City workers, people aged two to 96.” Of the 200 people he asked, 167 agreed. “I think that is the beautiful thing about all this,” he smiles. “It’s not just about Nick Drake – half the people had never heard of him.”

He calls his collection of photographs the Strange Face Project, a nod to the song’s opening line: “Strange face/ With your eyes/ So pale and sincere.” It was also a reference to the peculiar intensity that played across subjects’ faces as they listened. “With four minutes 22 seconds to photograph someone,” says Burdett, “I invariably found that the images were telling.” READ MORE of the Guardian story here

There is a website for more details about this photography project and a documentary being made about it here

There is an exhibition of the photographs from 27/1/12 – 12/02/12 at Idea Generation, here is a link to their site

This is what they say about they exhibition and Nick Drake

Adventures with a Lost Nick Drake Recording

27/01/12 – 12/02/12

Since his tragic death in the mid seventies, Nick Drake’s haunting music has influenced countless artists – from Kate Bush to Radiohead. we are very excited to share a brand new exhibition, telling the story of how the discovery of a previously unheard recording has touched the lives of a very special group of people; the lucky few, who were chosen to hear it.

Nick Drake is hailed as one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the last 50 years yet his is one of the most mysterious and intriguing stories of 20th century pop. Before his suicide in 1974 aged just 26 he was a relatively unknown artist but in his short recording career he had generated a legacy that would go on to influence some of pop’s most high profile artists.

©Keith Morris

©Michael Burdett

Hear Nick Drake HERE