Anna Bramham

Posted by
Ian Bramham (Manchester, United Kingdom) on 22 October 2010 in People & Portrait and Portfolio.

I've been practising my portrait photography a lot recently but I've been finding it a lot harder than landscapes. Here's a photo of my daughter that I took last weekend.

I used a Nikon 105mm f2.8vr micro lens and my camera's pop-up flash at a very low setting.....in fact I had set the flash wrongly but that's not at all unusual for me as I've found learning about how flash works difficult too!

Even though the background was quite some distance away and I was at f3 it was still quite distracting so I used a bit of Photoshop gaussian blur on it at a 100 pixel radius which helped a lot and only took a few seconds.

NIKON D700 1/60 second F/3.0 ISO 200 105 mm (35mm equiv.)

Like what you see here and are interested in photographic composition?.....the blog section of my website now has a complete set of 5 articles covering my personal approach to the subject: Ian Bramham Photography - Blog

For purchasing high quality archival prints of any of these photos you can send me an email by clicking here or by going to my website Ian Bramham - Fine Art Photography where prices are listed in the gallery sections under each individual photo.

Comments (10)

Babzy from Besançon, France

nice to meet you Anna ;)

22 Oct 2010 6:58am

Richard from Duns, United Kingdom

Beautiful! Anna looks as though she is full of questions. I'm glad you have trouble with flash too :)

22 Oct 2010 7:00am

Marie LC from Dauphiné, France

Nice bw portrait.

22 Oct 2010 7:06am

Scene by Sharon Photography from Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Wonderful portrait, Ian - and it is really nice to meet Anna. I am a fan of her photo blog as well.

22 Oct 2010 10:38am

Magda from Vancouver, Canada

Very nice! I love the DOF and her expression! Well done :)

23 Oct 2010 6:43am

Frida from Sweden

Hi Anna, nice to meet you. I like the expression on your face. Great portrait.

23 Oct 2010 8:04pm

Bishop from Houston, United States

I, too, find portraits to be much harder to do that landscapes... check out my daughter's portrait on my site, although, strictly speaking, it is not a portrait as much as a snapshot! :)

23 Oct 2010 8:53pm

hugo poon from hong kong, Hong Kong

Nice to meet you, Anna! Such a brilliant young lady... beautiful shot Ian! Lovely touch!:-)

24 Oct 2010 5:00am

Ian Smith from London, United Kingdom

Portrait photography is something I learned a lot about in college (xx years ago), and I'm still not that great at it :-) (I should scan in all the old negs someday) The one thing I can say is that lighting and an interesting subject is key to success. Photographing a person is one thing, but 'portraiture' is something that usually shows 'who' a person is. Its difficult to think 'how' to show this in most situations, but I'm sure you'll crack it.
This is a nice photo of Anna - she looks very comfortable being photographed (obviously by her dad), and you're decision to add extra blur is often necessary if the bokeh is misbehaving.

25 Oct 2010 3:55pm