PORTRAITS

I've transferred my blog onto Blogspot as it can handle slideshows, unlike Wordpress.

I've been slack lately, I should have blogged about the portrait assignment we were set quite a while ago. My tutor John Easterby said that this assignment usually proves to be the most difficult of all, one which most students struggle with, and he sure was right. Portraits are something I do on a regular basis for the paper, but it's always a pretty straight forward shoot, we never want anything complicated for that. Portraits to run with interviews are usually shot during the interview itself, often with whatever available light there is. There is no direction of the subject on our part, we just shoot throughout the interview whenever it looks right.

This time round I had to be more careful. John specifically wanted us to direct the shoot, pose the subject and so on. I had a few ideas of who to shoot, but time constraints meant I had to make do with newspaper assignments, and just be more creative than we normally are.

The first assignment was to do portraits of retired tenor Paul Asciak at an exhibition of his career as an opera singer. In the image which worked, I posed him in front of a photo showing him much younger when he played the title role in Verdi's Otello. Other images of him next to costumes he'd worn on stage didn't work too well.



MAPJD Portraits EDIT- Paul Asciak - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi




The second assignment was with choreographer and dancer Felix Busuttil, who'd just hung up his dancing shoes for the last time, though he was at pains to stress he would continue working as a choreographer and director. The interview took place in a dark cafe, so once it was over, I took him out onto the shaded terrace of St James Cavalier, and placed him against the old stonework of the fortifications. I did a variety of close ups and long shots. The shots with his hands against his chin didn't look right, looked too posey.

Once those were out of the way, we moved to another nearby location, the ruins of the bombed out Royal Opera House, as it featured prominently in the interview. There has been talk of using the site to build a new houses of parliament, while the arts community is dead set against that. Felix was quite categorical when he stated that the site belonged to artists, and it should be returned to artists. The photos there, however, appear a bit forced as an idea, and didn't work too well. The light wasn't right either. The images of Felix on the terrace were the most successful of the three shoots, according to John.



MAPJD Portraits EDIT- Felix Busuttil - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi




The final assignment was with artist Eman Grima in a gallery hosting his latest exhibition. I had more time on my hands than is the norm for this, so I was able to get a variety of images, partly thanks to Eman's full and helpful cooperation. Some images worked better than others. For some shots, I went wide, using the depth of the gallery. I also went for tight face shots, the guy's got a very interesting face. Most were done with available light - the few when I used a bit of flash to help out didn't work well.

The results, according to John, were competent, more than good enough for any newspaper anywhere, but I need to go beyond that - I need to break out of my newspaper mode, which won't be easy, considering I've been in that mode for some 18 years.



MAPJD Portraits EDIT- Eman Grima - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi