A new found hobby perhaps?

*Amy Sutherland- an honours linguistic student, a baker and one of my confidants*

I wake up at 6am, bounce out of bed and eagerly skip to class these days. Yes, the sun is now rising earlier and I have sun streaking through my three bedroom windows, but I wake up so excited rather, to go to class and learn more about photography! I can officially say, that if I don’t take up another course to deepen my basic photographic knowledge, then I am quite happy to adopt it as a hobby along with baking, soduku, eating the said baked goodies, running to journalism department, reading a page of a book and so the ‘exhilarating’ list continues.

This week has seen me running around Grahamstown with my on-loan camera, taking shots of anything that our Intensive lecturer, Harold told us to. Wednesday was all about portrait shots. I have realised that I get so excited in his classes, trying to sponge up everything he says and then somehow forgetting to take notes. Just to give you an example of how bad my memory is, you can ask my closest friends about how I cannot for the life of me remember my ID number, it took me a good couple of months to learn my cellphone number and then there is the terrible, atrocious, horrible (they would fill in more adjectives if I gave them the chance to) fact that I can’t remember anybody’s birthday *face palm moment*. But, in my defence, I am trying and I have written down their birthdays in my diary, so there, if they read this post, I am trying dear Shire-lings. 

Anyway, domestic situation aside, yes, portrait shots! From what I (think I) remember, Harold told us to take pictures of people, five we know and five we don’t. Vary the shots- environmental shots (people in their environments/working places) and close ups. The most important thing to do (according to Nadia’s memory) was to get them to acknowledge you as the photographer- that there is an agreement between you and the person. Harold spoke to us about using the eyes as an opportunity to understand and gain access to another level of that person. Find out the person’s name as that is the first step towards how a normal picture and portrait will differ. By the time the lecture was over I was like Lewis Hamilton, ready to GO GO GO!

 

Out of the Journalism department and pounding the street was a different story though. It was a sweat-dripping scorcher of a day, and I found the sunlight to be quite harsh in some of my photos making the people I photographed squint, or frown, but there were some fairly decent shots. I also got my first rejection from a sangoma in training, she didn’t take to my bright, doe eyed wannabe photographer grin. Below are some of the photos that I really like and I got some good crit back from Harold. His advice thus far is in relation to my editing using photoshop (which is another story and a titanic one at that). Here are my pics! Please feel free to comment:

*Bron Mantel- a deep thinker, one of the people I care about and respect the most and a photographer herself*

*Mr Thomas- one of the most beautiful faces I have had the privilege of shooting since holding onto my trusty on-loan camera : ) *

*Thobani- a soccer enthusiast and the next big presenter/journalist (love him to bits)*

One of the things that I have enjoyed about this exercise is that I get to know people while I take photos, especially these portrait shots. People tend to get nervous with a camera in their face and I found that by just talking to them, asking them about their day, what makes them happy, what makes them sad or what their favourite food is can really make a difference. You get a grin that reaches the eyes, a hand that strokes a lip and then just like magic the memory  almost falls out their eyes as they describe their mother’s cooking or that the holiday was needed after a heavy term. That’s when I try and get them to glance at me and try capture that. I’m still working  on it, but as a rookie I am trying to learn as much as I can and just enjoy the experience of it all. And that, as my grampa Mr. Leonard Moore (or Lenny/Gramps to me) always says, makes all the difference. 

Nadia