I recently got my camera back from the repair center where they had replaced the shutter, upgraded the firmware and given the whole thing a service. This did, unfortunately, mean that a lot of my settings had been played with or reset. Since I couldn’t remember half of the settings I’d used I decided to just take the camera out for a day and fiddle.

The day in question was a friends birthday meal, followed by a quick drink in the pub, a film and, finally, a drink in the local. I finally realised why the camera completely blows some images when the flash is on (if the flash isn’t properly seated the TTL light doesn’t go on and the flash fires at full strength) which was useful.

It was unfortunate that the weather wasn’t too great and the walk to and from the restaurant was a little rushed as Long Melford has some wonderful photographic potential. The group of people I was with were also no overly keen on being photographed which made getting relaxed, natural photographs hard. That said, I did manage to get a good shot of almost everyone who attended plus a random macro of the table decoration.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the portraits and random images galleries. The images from Lee’s birthday can be found under the protected section in the gallery: Lee’s Birthday.

When people think of portrait photography they usually think of contrived shots with a fake backdrop, studio lighting and fake smiles. For me portrait photography is more about capturing real people in the moment. I started doing portraiture quite by accident after a family outing to Bolton Abbey. Rain meant that photographing the Abbey and grounds wasn’t going to happen so I turned the camera on my family instead with some very good results.

While most people say you should use 85-135mm 35mm equivalent lenses for portraits (roughly 70mm to 100mm on my camera) I tend to go for a longer 70-200mm lens, quite often with a 2x teleconveter to give 140-400mm. The shots of my brother and nephew were both done with the teleconverter meaning I could shoot them from quite a distance away and they had no idea they were being photographed, hence the great natural expression.

Ironically enough the 100mm macro is also a great portrait lens giving great bokeh to the backround. The lens is also less intrusive than the 24-70 f2.8 L or the 70-200 f2.8 L meaning people are more at ease (shoving a large lens in peoples faces tends to terrify them).

Of course there is nothing to say you can’t get a bit creative with your portraits. This shot of my niece was done with a 50mm f1.4 close up giving a slightly distorted perspective, and the shot of Poppy is done with the 100mm macro at a very close distance meaning her face fills the frame nicely.

Portraits don’t just have to be of people, they can also be of pets (I would argue that calling pictures of pets ‘wildlife’ photography is stretching a point somewhat), although it can be somewhat harder to get them to do what you want.

All images in this post can be found at images from… under the portraits gallery.