Generating ideas - Portraiture

For this task I was asked to go out in groups and take portraits challenging the conventions around the college. During this I used to few different techniques to challenge the conventions of portraits. I used techniques that include reflections, shadows, slow shutter speeds, items of clothing to represent a person and different body parts not including the face. Using reflections I photographed a few different images, including self portraits and a reflection of the hands of a member of my group. The second technique I used for this is to use shadows, it challenges the conventions by not being a usual portrait and shows the shadow of a person instead of the actual person. The third technique I used included body parts and includes scars and beauty spots as well as jewelry and I also used the absence of a person by just photographing a possession which includes a shoe, so its like the trace of a person without including the person in the portrait. By using slow shutter speeds i captured the movement of a person which can be interesting and doesn't always show all the aspects of a person, which challenges the conventions of portraits. Also looking round college I found there was a dog, which I decided to photograph as I thought it challenge the perspectives of portraiture by photographing an animal instead of the person. Within this shoot I feel that I challenged the perspective of portraiture a lot by finding different ways to shoot it, which I feel was successful in this task, some more than others. 

A couple of the techniques I liked was the reflections and the photographing the dog, I think these techniques are a good way to challenge the perspective of photography and come out with good images that are both appealing in successful in what i was trying to do. The last idea I had which was using slow shutter speeds to capture the movement of someone spinning i feel had good intentions but didn't work out as good as i hoped it would.

I could use these ideas in my final work by using similar techniques to challenge the perspectives of portraiture, such as photographing other aspects of a portrait other than their face. To push the conventions of a portrait I could use other techniques to do with the camera other then photographing differently. I could do things such as placing things within the lens.