Blog category: Portrait
Looking…
The power of the square format
In portraits it all is about the person and expression shown. Some portraits clearly benefit from the square format, they get more powerful.
By choosing the square format the features of the face get more attention and the character of the person becomes more relevant. This portrait has been made in a house entrance, the background almost is pure black and helps to put even more focus on the man shown.
More portraits can be found in the portraits section of the galleries section on this website.
Déjà Vu – Turkey vs. Switzerland
Déjà Vu – Mali vs. Senegal
Color: I start to like it!
In another post I explained why I started publishing color photos. Today I took one from the Ethiopia trip and let the colors play. The colors in the original RAW file where too poppy for my taste, I carefully reduced them and this is what could make out of it.
For my taste this is the kind of color I am looking for in my photos. One of the visitors of this blog (Stefan) took his time to look closer to the photo and gave some valuable feedback.
The image slider on the right shows the original and new version (slider left). In the new photo the background has been blurred and color is a bit more desaturated.
I invite everybody to make critical comments to my posts, a bit more than beautiful, wonderful is highly appreciated!
What comes after the G.A.S.?
Portraits not in the galleries
In the galleries section of this website I show portraits of people that look directly to me. In some portraits this is not the case but they are still worth to share here. Here a portrait of my brother Marcel at home in Holland.
Amhara Nikisat
The Amhara people also known as Abyssinians, are an ethnic group from the northern and central Ethiopian highlands.
The neck and facial tattoos called Nikisat are standing out against the traditional white clothing and elaborate jewelry. Lines of tiny crosses along jaws and traditional Ethiopian shaped crosses on foreheads prove the intensive dedication to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
A YouTube video/slide-show about the celebration of Timkat in Gondar (Ethiopia) can be found here.
The Arbore tribe in the Omo Valley
Earlier this year I visited Ethiopia a country with an incredible variation of people. These 3 portraits are from the beginning of a visit to the Omo Valley in the delta of the Limo River (sometimes called Weyto or Dullay. The Arbore tribe with a total population of 6850 is living in 4 villages: Gandareb, Kulaama, Murale, and Eegude. Their economy of subsistence depends largely on the periodical floods of the river. Visiting the village was a smooth experience and I took some first portraits of young woman, at first there was some shyness but after a while, they where looking directly to me. This is the kind of portraits I like, for me direct eye contact is a main element in my photography.
Why color?
Till recently, I showed my work only as black and white. While processing the images sometimes I start to think about color. For me this was a difficult decision, it took me months to take the step to color. Finally I published two photos in Color on my old Photo-Vinc website.
On this website I now will bring more color. I am trying to find my style, not too much colors, decent slightly de-saturated.
Bellow some samples:
More colorful work in the portraits section here on this website.
Portraits
In the portrait section of this website I show portraits of people looking directly at me. No candid portraits; I always ask for permission even when I do not speak the language of the people I do manage this.
