What are these doing here? I shot portraits, I never shoot portraits.

Back in March I joined Caity and Geoff on a shoot they were doing with Kana and Adam, an engaged couple I knew next to nothing about. While I won’t say I know them very well now both Adam and I think we know each other from somewhere but we’re stumped about how that is, when we have met, where or why… (I don’t think asking who is applicable here.)

For the most part I just expected to watch and help when needed, it gave me something to do other than sit at home and try to get some work done on a Sunday afternoon. Eventually that got boring so I broke out my camera and started taking shots when I saw an opportunity. Normally I really don’t care for shooting portraits or people in general, but shooting couples is at least somewhat interesting sometimes because capturing their shared emotions can be fun. Still if I was asked when I last shot anything like this I wouldn’t have an answer.

Some of the shoot was in the shade, some in the direct sun, I wasn’t in control of the locations. I popped up the little flash on my Rebel XTi since that’s all I brought with me and I figured the flash might help a bit if the camera was aimed right to minimize the shadows. In the end that did work out but I had some shadows to remove… an awful lot of work for photos I don’t have a whole lot of interest in!

I processed a half dozen of the photos originally and got pretty fed up with it, without control over lighting I had some corrections I had to make and I was also experimenting with some of the usual skin treatments portrait & fashion photogs usually use. I’d never done any before so after figuring it out on my own (and comparing my technique against what a friend who does this regularly uses) I finished the rest of them off. Turns out all that sort of processing isn’t a whole lot of fun either which didn’t surprise me. I left the photos at that (and posted them to my Flickr) until today when I picked the process back up where I had left it. Caity finally had time to work on hers which inspired me to put a little more effort in to mine. In the end I’m actually glad I did, I’m fairly happy with them all things considered. They’re still not really of a subject matter I am that interested in (people/portraiture) but at least they turned out reasonably well and I think the expressions or emotions the two of them are sharing make them interesting. The only thing I’m really bummed about is chopping off her finger tips in the one at the beginning of this post. Oh well!

Will I shoot more like this in the future’ Probably, shooting couples actually can be somewhat rewarding for me. Catching the shared expressions, like the little details in their eyes or the corner of their mouths, is kind of fun. I still wouldn’t consider it a favorite subject though!