portraits of strangers

on Sunday,the 10th of April, i attended the "15-seconds of Portrait" masterclass by award-winning portrait photographer David Graham at the National Portrait Gallery.

it was a basic course for all levels just showing us his style and his ideas of (fine art) portrait photography.

The course was 5 hour course attended by professionals,hobbyists and some people in the magazine and make up industry who just wanted to learn some ideas about portrait photography.


Mr.Graham comes from the school of thought that portrait photography that "is staged, the person is looking straight into the lens, and engaging with the photographer with his eyes with MOUTHS CLOSED" (mostly sombre looking portraits)..or one or two of those elements combined.

With the current trend of staged portraiture photography right now,he thinks most portrait photographers are blurring documentary and portrait photography (which is actually what i like,haha).

He said,it only takes him 15 seconds to take a portrait of someone.He showed us photos of actors he took portraits of. One took 12 seconds, and one took 6 seconds. Although he said,he doesnt like taking portraits of actors or famous people. he said his best photos are from people that roam the streets.

The best part of the course?: learning how to get the courage to ask a stranger and to take their pics.

Part of the day's assignment was to pair up with someone.

I got paired up with photographer Orla.

She and i had to take photos of one another.

(i felt sorry for her,she sure got the poor end of the bargain for having to take photos of me,LOL)

Then another assignment was to head out to the streets for 30 minutes to take ask as many strangers for their photos. (now if you live in England,you know how difficult it is to do that as everyone is so paranoid of where their photos would end up). That is why most of my photos of strangers are documentary (where they are not looking), as i get so embarrassed asking them to look into my lens.

It was actually easier than i thought. No one said 'No' to me.

these were all i could muster for 30 minutes as it was a good 10 minutes walking up and down the street from the National Portrait Gallery to Leicester Sguare.

The hardest part was asking people and to ask them to take their pics and not to smile, and mouths closed.(Mr.Graham said, that for him,to get the best of someone's portrait with mouths open, they either laugh out loud or not at all so, with mouths closed. Anything in between, for him is borderline 'fake' smile.)

Note: Mr.Graham comes from a different portraiture background. His background is not wedding nor glamour photography. So i feel,his school of thought is less mainstream. His works are in galleries (case en pointe: the national portrait gallery and the taylor wessing portrait exhibits).

Overall,the course was an immense help. it made me realise how i love street photography and (documentary photography) and its fine art aspect. it made me realise how i am more geared less and less out of the glamour aspect of photography these days, i don't know what happened, blame it on visiting the National Portrait Photography regularly the last few months and also recently seeing the Ida kar exhibition,maybe,i don't know.

it was nice to learn and hear from one of the Masters.

one for the road:

(practicing with Adrian when i met up with him for food,lol).

and oh: our snacks:

a sweet lemon and syrup pancake for the sweet toothed,me.

a savoury bacon and emmental cheese pancake for my date.