After experimenting with my first roll of film (b&w, 100 ISO) with fairly decent results I felt ready to attempt the next step and start taking portrait shots. I even had an ideal location, since my wife's family rented a holiday house for a week over Christmas, where I had a good number of people (about twenty of them) who would not run away (hopefully), or even if they did, I could easily try again the next day.
A Mistake to Learn from
I still had a second roll of film I was going to use for this project, another black&white but with an ISO of 400. From what I've learned, this should also work well if the light conditions were not ideal, though the place we were going to go was Cuernavaca, known as the town of eternal springtime, so plenty of sunshine was almost guaranteed. Unfortunately, when I inserted the film, I failed to adjust the ISO settings. - As I said, in my camera nothing is automatic. - I only noticed this when I was at the end of the roll, so I thought all my efforts were for naught. Luckily, at the film institute where I took it to be developed, they told me they could "force it by 2 stops". So in the end most of them turned out to be okay.
So how did they turn out? Some are incredible. Others could be better. But each photo taught me something, so I feel quite good about them. Let me share a few of them here.
Memo, a Man of Action
I like how this photo turned out. It may seem like a snapshot, but I actually took pretty long adjusting all my settings before I pressed the shutter release. In the meanwhile I kept up a conversation with Memo, while he was preparing dinner. This way he remained his relaxed self instead of anticipating the moment of truth. Afterwards I received a number of positive criticisms, confirming my own good feeling about it. What I particularly like about this photo is how absorbed he is in his task. Some things to improve on are the background and the framing. One common tendency I identified in many of my portraits is the immense headroom I left on the top section of the pic.
Santiago, Tall as a Saguaro
This is my wife's nephew Santiago, whose height is literary 2 meters or 6.6 feet. So I decided to put him in a pose where his tallness would be subtly suggested instead of being made blatant. I was not sure if it would work, but in the end I surprised myself. Could it be that I made him look even taller than he is? Maybe it's his singlet, maybe his long fingers and toes, or it could be him sitting on the stairs like that. I also love the fact that he's not looking at the camera.
Adriana, in her Element behind the Wheel
I thought this was gonna be such a great shot! My wife's sister Adriana is a passionate Uber driver, and even before she started driving professionally, she's always been happy sitting in the driver's seat. Some people have naturally grown together with their cars, and she is certainly a great example of that. That's why I picked this setting for her. Unfortunately, I didn't get the focus and the lighting right. Her hands are more in focus than her face, and the way the shadow falls is not exactly favorable. Not bad, but I could have done much better.
Alex, Breaking the Rules of Framing
This is how you normally should NOT frame a portrait: the person sitting in the middle of the image, behind a table. I knew this perfectly well, still for this photo I decided to ignore the rule, and hope for the best. In the end I can't say it was a bad decision. The only thing I regret is not going closer up to him... at least to get the pole of that shade structure out of the way. But I just love his expression, and for some reason his Winnie the Pooh coffee cup.
Marta, Inviting Some Fun Shenanigans
Finally I want to end my selection with my wife's cousin Marta. The two of them used to be good little girls individually, except for when they got together trouble was never too far. I never expected that any of this would come across in my portrait shot, but here it is. OMG! If pictures speak volumes, this one would say something like: What is she up to now? And all I did was place her in that stairwell. Her hand gesture and body posture is all her own improvisation. I'm so glad I let her do her thing, creating such an intriguing image.
These are some examples of my first try at portrait photography. Clearly, it's a long learning process, requiring plenty of practice, before the theory is internalized, and good results become controlled and are not completely up to random. I hope you like the selection I wanted to share, and if you have feedback of any kind, I would be more than happy to know them.