Portraits, have you noticed how all over the place I am with portraits, first I hate them then I can’t live without them? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that really I need them and quite a lot and realised that they don’t have to be straight up of a face. A portraits simply has to describe something about the person, for me anyway and I’m sure others feel the same.
I have been doing a project about crofting, as you may well know, and I’m trying my best to include people but as always finding it a challenge. For my last project I did a large section of portraits and while I was relatively happy with my first series of street portraits in my feedback I was told that though they did present the story they were out of my style and didn’t do me justice. A good thing to hear really, constructive criticism is always good and I have certainly kept it in mind when photographing people for this body of work.
I’m coming closer to the person but not too close its about what the people are doing, and I will share a couple of these with you but not without a little more information.
I took one of these today whilst visiting a working croft, which was very interesting I learnt about the care that some of the livestock need, and Helen (whom owns the croft with her husband) said, in a round about way, that for her crofting wasn’t about buying all of the fanciest equipment or newest stuff, but instead about making almost the same thing with materials spare from something else. This statement really resonated with me because while researching I found out so much about community spirit in the old townships and Helen reminded me of this, they made the best from every little thing they had. Nothing is wasted, until its broken at least.
The other image is of my grandmother who is the widow of a crofter, with it I’m really trying to show all of the sides to crofting.
Ruaridh Cameron 