Last
month I entered another photography competition, and one of the categories was
emotive portraits. As
I am still a bit of a newbie at photography, I caught a train into the city to
see what I could find. Clearly I don't go to the city often enough, because I found lots of interesting things including some people who I thought were good subjects. I told them I was entering a competition, and everybody I spoke to was happy
to let me photograph them. Actually I
was a little overwhelmed by the response.
I
ended up submitting three portraits, and
last week these all scored Bronze Awards. According to the
Better Photography website, Bronzes are awarded for displaying some
aspects of great photography. It means the judges can see more than just a
snapshot and that the entrant is using the language of photography in a
positive manner. I wasn't too unhappy with the results. Compared with the amazing winning photographs on the website, mine are pretty ordinary. And the Bronze Awards are a start. The challenge now is to elevate my photography skills to another level.
That
aside, I’ve heard of writers finding a picture that most resembles the
character they have in a story, cutting it out, and sticking it up next to
their computers, so that they can see the character as they work. It helps them to imagine how the character
will react/respond to situations, and to remember, for instance, what colour
his or her eyes are.
I
actually prefer not knowing exactly
how my character looks. I’ve got a
pretty good idea, but it’s not cut and polished. And I like that because I want the reader to
use their imagination a little, to have their own concept of how a character
looks. I don’t want them to be confined too much by my description.
But
what struck about this photography exercise is that I now have some piccies of
interesting people.
Characters I can
think about putting into stories.
Characters I can weave stories around.
I’ve
shared some of them here with you. And, yes, this last one is a LOL piccie. Who can resist a character with a face like this?