Day 63, 070509

Last night was Exposure Leeds #3 (task #85). I was doing the meeting people thing, signup sheets, please put 50p in the mug for hot drinks. Alex turned up, and we had a good chat about 101 things (and life in general, and Python *rolls eyes*) before we started the event rolling. We had a talk from a nice chap called Alan who is a pro photographer (on salary!) doing portraits for corporate magazines, which was very interesting and reiterated the whole "get the flash off the camera" thing. He talked about some shots and the thoughts that went into them, use of environment, scouting, showing what the people do in order to get into the magazine as part of the portrait, use of space and allowing for text and headlines and captioning... and also, how much luck is involved. "Adapt" was the message of the day, I think.


B&W slice of light
We also had a talk from Anne, which was a total break from the norm as it was only tangentally involved in photography. Except, it turns out that it's vitally important when taking portraits. It was about use of colour, on people. Or, in the early 90's style, "doing your colours". Anne had a pile of swatches that were everso slightly different from one another, and picked out volunteers with different skintones and hair colour and eye colour, and showed just how different one red was different from another. Portraiture is a lot to do with getting the subject comfortable and happy, and if you have the greatest shirt in the world, and it's slightly too blue for the subject's skintones then the subject will hate it, and not always know why, which is the reason getting the right colours for the right person can make or break a photo.

Not like that, just like that...
It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, like all the ELs have been so far. I always come away from them feeling inspired to do... stuff. A fantastic resource, and one I'm proud to be a part of.

Completely ignoring all the advice I'd just been given

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (62/365), #13, #26, #37 (2/<34), #60 (11/50), #68, #66 (21/250), #85 (3/4), #87, #88, #100 (3/>3)
Currently running exploratory tasks: #38 (1/18), #17 (1/54+), #57 (1/9+)
Currently running growing tasks: #41, #52
Completed: 6
Remaining: 95