Portrait-taking at the MFA

Saturday was my birthday and I spent the weekend taking lots and lots of photographs. Went to the MFA with mum on Friday (the company I work for gives you a day off for your birthday -- isn't that nice?). We saw the Ansel Adams exhibit and the "Things I Love" William Koch collection. More on that later.

One of my current photographic goals is to learn to take better portraits. It is progressing very slowly.

I took a bunch of portraits of my mum sitting by the window in the African Art room and while it looked like they came out in the preview pane of my camera, in fact they were almost all way too dark. I was able to salvage exactly one of them. It's this one:



Naturally, it's the one with the person in the background, though to be honest I don't really mind that he's there. At least he's wearing black, so he kind of blends into the scene. The light box atop her head and the pin on the neck of the sweater are the bigger problems, I think.

I also tried some "environmental" portraits, but they didn't come out, either. I edited the shit out of this one:



And I just noticed there is something funky going on in the dark areas of this photo. I think my monitor at home is much darker than the one at work.
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