"Amazing portraiture does not always require the architect"

About last year, I made a commitment to myself that I will practice to do portraiture really well. I started to buy a lot of lighting gears, reading blogs about flash photography and try to learn about how to make a photo, rather than to take a photo. I started by doing a lot of studio portrait which I can control lighting more easily. While I was quite satisfied with myself and the result I got, in looking back, I find that my experience on studio lighting was not so hard at all. You can angle the flash any way you want and the subject could prepare for nice clothing. Well, you get the picture.

This past summer when I bought my 85mm, I decided to walk around and just try to take pictures with this new lens. I certainly have walked around to take random photos before, but to me, this trip was quite a new experience.  In comparison to my studio lighting experiment, I guess what I really learnt at the end of that day was that amazing portraiture does not always require the architect. Some time, when you let the world revolve around you, you will find that there are many interesting frames everywhere (and I mean it). Kids playing in the pool, a musician playing on the street, family enjoying their time together in a mini circus, these are amazing moments that you can see if only you stop chasing with the world.

It is therefore important to keep this in mind before you begin to learn more about flash photography.  In some way, it is more challenging to do this type of candid photography.  In the GRE format, candid photography to portraiture is like engineering to science.  To be a good engineer, you need good ideas and hand skills.  To be a good scientist, you also need luck, just like the one you need for making good candid photos :D

PS. All right, I promise that next time I won't mix my nerdy junks with my artistic world :P

I hope you will enjoy my album below. For better quality images, you can just see them in my picasa web.