As the title states, this is a personal project. That of family. This is my husband’s father, my British father-in-law and semi-retired Anglican minister, who, when visiting us back in September, graciously agreed to sit for me. I’ve been wanting to properly photograph my father-in-law for a long time. But whenever my husband and I go to England for a visit, I’m unable to get the type of images I want of him, due to not having my lighting gear with me.
It’s taken me this long to finally get down to the nitty-gritty and work on this series of photos; I purposefully waited until I could push away the daily stresses of life and give my full attention to editing.
I had a very specific look I was going after when I set up my lighting and chose my lens. Although this may look “posed”, it’s not. I purposefully did not give much direction at all to my subject, as I wanted very natural posture and facial expressions. I wanted these portraits to capture him “just being” and the lighting to merely emphasize his features. This particular image was captured in a split second (1/200th, to be exact, for the photo-geeks), while he was pausing to answer a question I had asked.
There are a handful of images that will round out this series of my father-in-law, but this is the first image I decided to work on. It just sort of jumped out at me and it may be my favorite.
