Exercise 1: Portrait - scale and setting

This exercise explores the weight of attention to put on your subject's face.

I had to shoot 4 images of my subject:

• Face, cropped in close
• Head and shoulders
• Torso, taking into account arms and hands
• Full figure

I opted to use my 70-200mm lens for this exercise and I varied my position and the focal length to create my final images.  

Face, cropped in close.  

This is the closest crop I could get of the face as autofocus wouldn't work on a closer crop.  I considered using manual focus however it was a very windy day and I was finding it hard to keep the camera still. My tripod isn't solid enough for this kind of wind!

Head and shoulders.  I probably would have liked to get more of the person's right shoulder in the frame to balance out the shot a bit more. 

Torso, taking into account hands and arms. 

I opted for the hands in pockets pose which gives a very casual, informal and relaxed feel to this portrait. 

Full figure. 

Again I opted for the hands in pockets pose this time with the legs apart and one slightly bent.  I felt that this kept the informal, relaxed feel to the image carrying on from the previous shot. 

This exercise has introduced me to the various 'classic' poses that can be used in portraits.  I suppose prior to this I was more concerned about the face and less about shoulder position, where the hands are and stance.  Now that I have experimented with positioning I will be able to work more on it in future shoots.