Urban Portraits

[pm63]

Went on a photo trip with a friend today, and after walking into this tunnel I though it might be a cool location for some portraits of him:

1.

2.

3.

​

Sorry about the large images, but they are simply too dark to be properly viewed in postcard size. Taken on my D40 in manual mode, with shutter speed at 1/40th to prevent blur from camera shake, f/6.3 and ISO 800 to get enough light without using flash.

It took ages to find the right setting - auto mode made everything appear like it was a sunny summers day (NOT the effect I was after), P (programmed auto mode) made the subject too dark. I wanted to make it look like night, and have the lights at the top nicely light up the subject.

I usually don't do any PP, but here I brightened quite a bit (I underestimated just how dark the photos would come out) and incresed sharpness by a small ammount.

Sorry for all the blabbering. CC welcome.

 

[aperture monologue]

I think the pictures could have done with a little less brightening up. Also, I'd suggest you get closer to your subject, since these seem to have a lot of empty space. I'd also consider not having your main subject in the middle of the frame, since it can often make the picture seem static. Google "rule of thirds", that'llgive you a good basic guideline for composition. It's not always the most interesting way to compose a picture, but it almost always seems to work.
These are just some suggestions, feel free to ignore them if you want to.

 

[ernie]

use a tripod and set ISO to 100, that'll get rid of all that grain.
looks like a cool place to shoot, did you try out other point of views as well?