Alan and Margie: 9/50

Alan and Margie are my aunt and uncle. Alan is my mother's oldest brother. They are standing in my mother's living room, photographed on my visit to the UK last year. Alan, now retired, used to be a glider pilot, and took me up in a glider several times. I wanted to be a pilot when I was younger. Planes still have a certain fascination for me (though not the obsession I had as a child), and the quiet floating feeling of gliding is like nothing else.

Alan is also a keen photographer, and we talked about cameras and photography for a while when they visited. He came back the next day to give me a couple of Pentax lenses that he had used with his old film camera, which was very generous.

Taken on Kodak BW400 Professional. Pentax ME Super, 50mm 1.7. 

Rebecca and Brian: 8/50

Rebecca and Brian are my sister and father. They are pictured here in his back garden, talking as he waters his plants. My father told me he wasn't aware I was taking the photo; I'm not sure if Rebecca was.

Rebecca and Brian are close. She spends time in this house, and has a room there. This was my first visit to the house, on my visit to the UK last year. I am not as close to my father, but we have recently reconnected after being out of touch for a while, and we are becoming closer. Rebecca and he have an ease of interaction that I would like to find with both of them. Although my father and I have been visiting each other over the last few years, I don't get to see Rebecca as much as I'd like to. She, like I, has moved to another country and no longer calls the UK home. I'm looking forward to her and my mother visiting me next month.

Taken on Ilford HP5 400 film. Pentax ME Super, 50mm 1.7.

Gill: 7/50

Gill is my mother.

She is an independent person, in a way that I never really understood as a child - maybe because she had to forfeit a lot of that independence in order to be a full-time mother to myself and my sister.

But she has a very independent spirit, which I admire. She seems happiest when travelling with friends and exploring new places. I'm very grateful to her for the sacrifices she made to raise us. She does not consider them sacrifices, but I do.

As an adult, my relationship with my mother has naturally changed, though I think I have always felt close to her. I appreciate the space she has allowed me in which to grow into myself. We see each other a lot less these days, living on different continents, but it makes the time spent together that much more valuable. This photo was taken at a friend's wedding, during a visit to the UK last year. The background of flowers feels very appropriate, as one of Gill's favourite things to do is garden.

I also owe my mother a thank you for continuing to encourage me to take photographs as a teenager. Several of my cameras were presents from her.

This photo was taken with Kodak BW400 Professional film, and was not cropped or edited from the digital copy. Pentax ME Super, 50mm 1.7 prime lens.

Ben: 6/50

Ben is me; I am Ben. This is a self-portrait, from a series of shots I took for a Portrait Photography class at BCA in Burlington.

I enjoy self-portraits. They were the focus of my final project for the class that got me serious about photography, Digital Photography I at CCV in Winooski. For that project, I dressed up as Vincent van Gogh, and emulated eight of his famous self-portrait paintings. The final shots can be seen here.

Dan Lovell is the instructor for the class at BCA. He is encouraging us to think about and experiment with different types and directionality of lighting, which is how this shot came about.

Although there is some dim window light coming from my right, the main light source is a portable LED light held in front of and above me. Some processing was applied in photoshop - I increased the blacks to isolate my face, increased the contrast and clarity for visual 'pop', did a little noise reduction, converted to black and white and applied a sepia filter. I like the 'strikingness' of it.

ISO 200, f/8, 1/3 second. Focal length 30mm (micro 4/3).

Brian: 5/50

Brian is my father. He came over to visit from the UK for a week, and I asked if I could take his portrait. I asked him what kind of picture he would like, and he said his preference was for a scenic background behind him. I live right by Lake Champlain, so that is what we used. Dad used to be a sailor, so he enjoyed the vistas across the lake.

At first, Dad wanted to use a 'sea wall' and lighthouse as a backdrop. We also took shots with another lighthouse and a sailing boat in the background, but in the end, he picked this photo, which has a relatively simple backdrop.

I like this picture too. It was taken in very cloudy, overcast conditions, and the clouds have diffused the light really well, such that his face is pretty evenly lit, without much shadow. Despite my efforts with a reflector (which proved difficult in the wind), the photos we took on brighter days had too many shadows.

These were the first photographs I have really taken of my dad on his own. While I had cameras as a child (very basic film cameras which I would just press and wind), I rarely took portraits with them. I also have not spent very much time with my father in the last ten years, since I moved to the 'States, or even in the six years before that, since we stopped living together. We have recently reconnected, and are rebuilding our relationship, so this portrait is quite meaningful to me personally.

I tried not to over-process this photograph. I did desaturate it slightly - there are a lot of greys in it and I wanted to emphasize that, without losing the color in his eyes and shirt - but not much else. I used a tripod, and focused manually, which has been giving me better results lately than autofocus, especially trying to get Dad's eye in focus through his glasses. Here it is not perfect, but it is pretty good. Again, I think a landscape orientation works well here, as the backdrop (a landscape) is part of the image.

The sun (through a lot of cloud) is the only light source in this picture.

ISO 200, f/18, 1/30 second. Focal length 42mm (micro 4/3).

Mother and baby: 4/50

This is a shot from a family portrait session at an apple orchard. The family have asked me not to use their names.

I got a number of shots in a number of positions, inside, outside, with different combinations of people (another child and the father were also involved in the shoot). Most of the photos, however, suffered from looking somewhat staged (and many of them were). I was also having some issues with getting the lighting right.

I like this shot because I think it captured a candid moment between mother and son. The baby is looking towards us, and his mother is looking at him. I find this draws the eye across the image, and highlights their interaction. You can tell that he is her child.

I had to do a little work in post-processing to clean up the beam behind the baby's head, which had some distracting paint marks on it. I also had trouble getting the white balance and skin hues 'correct', but I think that this is close.

This is also my first portrait (of the fifty) in landscape format. I think it works well in that orientation, given that it shows the relationship between two people.

The only light in this photo is sunlight, coming in a barn door out of frame to our left. A reflector was used for many of the pictures in the shoot. I am not sure if it was in use here.

ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/80 second. Focal length 42mm (micro 4/3).

What's Good: 3/50

What's Good is the name of a band based here in Burlington, Vermont. They describe their style as 'funky soul jazz rock', and can be found on facebook here. My friend Jordan is one of the band members, and I had promised him some photos, so I went along to a gig at Nectar's in Burlington on October 12th and took some shots. This is my favorite.

Lighting was definitely a challenge here. The drummer, at back center, is barely visible, because he has no lights on him. There are also two more band members, who were not on stage when this picture was taken. My maximum aperture of f/3.5 was not large enough to give me a fast shutter speed at ISO 200, so I increased the ISO to 1250, which definitely results in some noise in the image.

However, I like the colors in this shot. I was able to white balance off the keyboardist's T-shirt, and the different lights gave the scene a multi-colored look. The blur is also minimal, despite not being able to shoot at a fast shutter speed. I think I captured a moment where there wasn't too much movement on the stage.

ISO 1250, f/3.5, 1/15 second. Focal length 14mm (micro 4/3).