Thursday 3rd of November 2022

Last night the photography club I’m a member of held a portrait evening. They’d held one a couple of weeks earlier too, but I passed on that one to go to the gym instead, as portraiture isn’t really my thing.

In fact, portraiture hasn’t ever really been something I’m interested in. I’m not really a very outgoing person; I was very shy as a kid, and even now, having mostly got over that, I’m still naturally quiet and a bit awkward around people I don’t know very well. I believe a good portrait is more than just a picture of what someone looks like: it should show who they are, too, and obviously you need to know someone before you can even begin to convey this in a picture. Thus, it takes me a while to get to know people, which is a problem when you only have an hour or so, which is shared with a bunch of other people at that.

Despite all that, I was looking forward to the evening, since if nothing else I could practice getting some technically proficient pictures, and experiment with ways to process them in Capture One.

Well, things didn’t go as expected: the models were unable to come, leaving us all in a bit of a bind. Luckily one of the members lives nearby, so he went back to get his dog! Meet Hove, a very good boy:

Hove the dog, and his owner Harry
Hove the dog, and his owner Harry

He enjoyed going around meeting everyone:

Hove making a friend
Hove making a friend

Hove looking happy
Hove looking happy

Of course, being a dog, getting him to pose was quite challenging.

managing Hove’s pose
managing Hove’s pose

But he didn’t mind being the centre of attention.

Hove being the centre of attention
Hove being the centre of attention

So, I think I got a pretty good portrait out of it.

portrait of Hove
portrait of Hove

As for equipment, I took my X-Pro 3 and the Fuji 35/1.4, 23/1.4 and 60/2.4 lenses along, and while I took the most pictures with the 23 and 60, my two favourites were taken with the 35. There’s just something about that lens; it’s kind of a difficult focal length to use, but when you nail it, the results are beautiful.