Perfect Composition in Portrait Photography with a G9

Portraits, are a good subject area to learn with your G9 the large LCD screen makes composition a snip, the Live view shows pretty much what you are going to get and hopefully you can have another go if your model is willing or the image is not quite what you wanted.

Portraits are also one of those subject areas news and documentary photographers need to master as looking in the national papers recently, there seems to be a very high percentage of images that are portraits which is strange, considering how much in the world is not getting shown in the way of wars, famine, joys, accidents, climate change… (and I could go on)

The magic of the portrait is the gaze back to the viewer and it has kept many fine art practitioners busy over the centuries, so you will be following in good shoes and for a twist you can also take a look at environmental portraits, macro, abstract, etc.

The grid view on the G9 can either be a hindrance or a blessing as an aid to your work, some people will find that to much information like the grid lines, histogram are in the way and distracting. while others will like the way the grid helps them frame the composition and keeps lines from converging in the background in environmental shots, so try different combinations to see what you prefer. You could even save the settings in the custom control C1 or C2 if you use them a lot (See G9 Resources for some help if you need it)

The thing is there are rules to composition that you can follow, but then you can also break them to make for interesting views, so it’s not a thing you can get wrong; but you will be the judge, if you like it then its good.

Photographers Under Attack!

THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE TAKE PHOTOS EVERY DAY.

WHAT IF ONE OF THEM SEEMS ODD? 

Terrorists use surveillance to help plan attacks, taking photos and making notes about security measures like the location of CCTV cameras. If you see someone doing that, we need to know. Let experienced officers decide what action to take.

The Metropolitan Police website

Well that was the strap line on the back cover of the London paper today and I predict a lot of stories coming out of it about photographers just trying to enjoy their hobbies, but now being constantly stopped by police, especially in a tourist hotspot like London.

Type in CCTV on Flickr (15,439 results) and see how many images you get or try the same on an image search Google (3,130,000 results) hmmm…

I doubt very much terrorists are going to be using Nikon D3 or Canon MkIII ds to do this kind of target research but more likely to use an average Joe tourist type of camera, the problem is the non-photographing public have no way of knowing one from the other and G9 users, best take care as it is such a discrete styled camera, even their add shows a compact camera as well as mobile phones, however with the mobile phone its how many they have that makes them suspicious, not the phone itself.

My personal feelings on this is that it makes me feel like a second rate citizen, like I have been accused of doing something wrong when I haven’t and my human rights have been infringed, heck I have even photographed CCTV cameras in the past, for aesthetics and as a statement about the times we live in and issues we face.

Check out the resources for the photographer in the sidebar and download and print the UK Photographers Rights PDF