Single shot portraits on MF

Awesome! I love the shot of the woman on the mat and the man with the guitar. I'd love to do portraits, but I am not a people person lol.
 
I'd love to do portraits, but I am not a people person lol

Well it's very easy:- you buy a digi choose anyone to shoot and take about 500 shots and there will be at least one that's very good o_O :exit:
 
Awesome! I love the shot of the woman on the mat and the man with the guitar. I'd love to do portraits, but I am not a people person lol.
I think you'd need to start somewhere like the Edinburgh Festival, where all the street performers seem to actively want their photo taken. I haven't actually been there myself, so maybe I'm over-simplyfying what's involved. :thinking:
 
I think you'd need to start somewhere like the Edinburgh Festival, where all the street performers seem to actively want their photo taken. I haven't actually been there myself, so maybe I'm over-simplyfying what's involved. :thinking:

I've gone to the street part of the Festival for years, and have got a few nice candid shots, although generally performers don't stop moving, so I usually find I've taken something other than what I wanted. Also, it's difficult to get a good position given other audience members who have as much right (or more right if they arrived earlier) to be in the spot you want.

One time I asked a performer permission (and paid up to his busking bowl), and he suddenly grinned and stuck his thumb up at the very last second just as the shutter was firing. Not at all what I wanted!

I have wondered about taking my Chroma, setting up in the street and waiting to see what would happen. In my dreams people come up and say "hey, what's that, cool, can you take my photo?". In reality even if they did they'd fade away before I even got the ground glass focused, let alone worked out metering, depth of field, etc etc!

However, I do know that @thedarkshed was at Leamington Art in the Park last weekend, and used his Chroma to take paper negative shots (at ISO 6!) of willing volunteers. Of course he does actually know what he's doing! (I meant to ask him how the paper negatives converted to the positive versions I later saw on twitter, but forgot...)
 
You could also use this. I have a 10x8 portrait of myself taken using this paper at the Harman stand at Focus on Imaging (sic), exposed with electronic flash and developed on the spot. It's ortho, so red safelight OK.
 
I've always wondered if you could set up an afgan box camera a do portraits during the festival, the novelty factor might be enough.
 
I hadn't come across this before - I had to DuckDuckGo (Google without the personalisation/selection) to find out what it was. Looks very interesting. Thanks.
 
I hadn't come across this before - I had to DuckDuckGo (Google without the personalisation/selection) to find out what it was. Looks very interesting. Thanks.

Yeah it's an interesting technique and culturally significant. Been tempted to build one for ages, there was a book/film but never got round to watching it.
 
I did briefly consider using a LF camera, direct positive paper and a Paterson orbital tank (with changing bag) at a local art fair, but decided against it for various reasons. Direct positive paper does eliminate one of the steps with the Afghan camera, to make the whole process shorter.
 
Yeah I thought about the direct positive paper too, however it would be nice to have the negative for my own use, a photo book or something.
 
Although all those portraits are fascinating, I notice that they are almost entirely of 'creatives' and wonder what the pictures of ordinary people looked like.
 
I have a tiny problem with this story based purely on my own experience of doing banquet photography back in the mid-1970s: He sets up his shot, he coaxes the subject, he presses the shutter release and none of them blinked? We always took 2 shots of each group because there was often at least 1 shot out of the 6 groups on a roll of film that showed happy smiling people - apart from the person with their eyes wide shut. I'd be happy to be proved wrong but... :thinking:
 
Although all those portraits are fascinating, I notice that they are almost entirely of 'creatives' and wonder what the pictures of ordinary people looked like.
I think he only shot creatives, rather than "ordinary" punters Toni, possible because they would buy in to the arty side of things?
Photographer Tim Willcocks did just that when he produced a series of portraits of creative people in Hastings and St Leonards on the south-east coast of England.
 
I think he only shot creatives, rather than "ordinary" punters Toni, possible because they would buy in to the arty side of things?

"He found his subjects by putting out appeals on social media, leading to more than 150 people contacting him." I read this bit, but not the part about creatives - my fault for skimming.
 
Awesome! I love the shot of the woman on the mat and the man with the guitar. I'd love to do portraits, but I am not a people person lol.

Neither am I, which is why I kind of like it. Forces me to interact with strangers who I wouldn't normally of done.

I think he only shot creatives, rather than "ordinary" punters Toni, possible because they would buy in to the arty side of things?

You'd be surprised. Most 'ordinary' people are interested in the composition of the photo.
 
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