Last Friday I had another option to teach some (more or less) willing students at Metafora, Barcelona, about taking portraits and photography in general…

As it has to do a lot with flash and light I had to make some tests at home first…

Movement is very interesting with an open shutter – as is my lamp illuminated by flash

So, quite well prepared we started… The first model didn’t seem to be too impressed

Actually she was quite tired (party…), yet still managed to even create half a smile

Modern Chinese family…

Obviously they had some fun

How to capture movement…

How to freeze a person amongst a background

I like this one…

Discover the depth of field (or how to create planes of sharpness where you want them…)

Next came Emi and with her nearly monochrome dress against the grey back this was just a wonderful colour combination

As I got a new lens (the Zeiss Otus 85mm 1.4 – http://www.zeiss.de/camera-lenses/de_de/camera_lenses/otus/otus1485.html) I had to play a bit…

That is the original picture…

This is the crop taken

And this is the result

Amazing details with 36 Megapixel from the camera… Yet with a bit of Photoshop it becomes much smoother. Fortunately I don’t have to do beauty shots as I don’t like this kind of retouching too much – it’s becoming unnatural.

Another willing model was Alma

I always like his facial expression and his ability to not move

As I had the large (8×10) camera with me as well, I took the chance to get some more shots…

This one is technically not very precise, yet I do love it for its expression and contours.

Very (perhaps too) narrow depth of field

Emi once more

We do need softer lenses – for sure…

And finally an error shot. The flash didn’t trigger 2 times, so we had 3 exposures on the same picture.