Been my first ever blog, i feel i should start by introducing myself and my craft. My name is Patrick Naughton and i like to think of myself as both an artist and photographer. Although my background in photography in primarily landscapes, recently i have undertaken the art of photographing people. To landscape photographers this may seem a daunting task. When i photograph landscapes the idea is to capture the essence of a particular place. So, the concept of photographing skin tone instead of rock formations is an alien one to me. With landscapes it is just you and the elements. You can take your time, compose the shot, breath and shoot. Add people to the equation and suddenly there are time restraints and bad hair days.
So, to ease myself into this new world i brought my first portrait subject to territory familiar for me. I picked a woodland area in Enniskerry.
The location i picked worked well as an individual landscape photograph although the task at hand was to integrate a body into the image. As my subject Nadja moved towards the centre of the viewfinder, my first thought was "there is somethimg obscuring the landscape, and the light its changing!". I eventually got over the intrusion in the viewfinder and began to shoot some portraits.
When photographing Nadja i tried to shoot several different positions as the light was very limited and was unsure of how the lack of light might affect the details of the face. As it turned out in the photograph above, detail is lost in the face because the trees obscure the natural lightsource. So, after trying several shots Nadja glanced up at the trees and light briefly shone off her face. That moment captured both the essence of the landscape and the human form intertwined.
Refleceting on the results of my first portrait session i feel i have gained some invaluable experiance in the art of portraits. I have learnt about the importance of communication between the subject and the photographer, how to use a limited light source to your advantage and how to integrate nature and the human form. But most importantly, I have come through this new photographic experiance relitively unscathed. I am not suffering from post photographic stress disorder and have found a new strand of photography to investigate. Whether or not i shall continue to photograph people, only time will tell.
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