Experiments in Portraiture

Although a stimulus to the empathetic imagination,
traditional self-portraiture and portraiture rarely display the
multiplicity of people’s personalities, their contradictions and
assumptions, the variety of their secrets and dreams. Ultimately
the main use of reflecting upon and responding to a portrait
may be to discover more about ourselves.
-Roman Krznaric, Empathy and the Art of Living

It was Lia’s birthday a couple of weeks ago and I took the opportunity to practice taking portraits of people. Here is that which I came up with.

There are a few more at my flickr and the Climate Camp photos are there too, if you want a headstart on tomorrow’s post.

With photographing people I have found that you just need to take so many photos that they stop caring. It also helps if they are drunk or high in terms of whether they put a hand up to their face or the camera to stop you, but not in terms of whether they look at their best for the photo. Kind of ironic really. This ought to be a factor in me taking more photos, so as to condition my friends into being at ease around the camera and also teaching me to be at ease around people with a camera and not be afraid to get in their faces for the perfect shot.

Partay!

Amelia

ps. I am now on Twitter if you’re into following or being followed…