photography - observational portraits

this week we have been introduced to photography. throughout the workshop we have been studying different portrait photographers and discussing how each of them use different techniques such as lighting and composition to create different effects. we went out to the weekly chesterfield market to take photographs of sellers and customers. our brief was to produce a set of portraits that captured character through use of composition and angles. i really enjoyed this task as i found the marketplace to be extremely interesting! there were lots of different characters of all ages and it definitely wasn't hard to chose the subjects of our photographs. quite a few people were very enthusiastic about having their photograph taken, and one of the sellers even posed for a photograph and asked us to make sure we got her good side. others were less friendly with the lens and would step out of frame turn away when we attempted to photograph them. we also found that a lot of the photographs happened by accident, and people would walk into the shot unknowingly. one of the best examples is the middle aged woman with the scarf who stepped in front of the camera as we were trying to photograph someone behind her. we found that quite often these 'accidental shots' were better than the ones we'd originally planned. after returning to college we narrowed our photographs down to the 15 best ones. i decided to edit a couple of them in photoshop just to bring out more of the darker and lighters tones and fix the exposure a bit. however, i didn't make any major changes and the photos appear mostly exactly the same as when they were taken. you can view my final 15 pictures in the slideshow above or view the best ones individually below.