Portrait of a natural beauty. Isabel.

portrait photography by anna nowakowska dublinIsabel is from Brasil. She is radiant and very pretty. I took this photography in the morning of a very blurry and cold day. She was chatting away in the kitchen and then she turned back to talk to me as I was interrupting the already very busy Saturday morning breakfast and  the light from the kitchen window fell directly onto her face. It  brighten up my day and as Isabel is recently engaged to to my fellow photographer Wanderley Massafelli I hope she will be your sunshine forever.

on my website more on my passion – baby photography

Candid engagement portraits.|wedding photography dublin

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I have recently been fascinated by the term candid in photography. It interested me to the point that I wanted to get to the roots of that word. it comes from Latin and it means white.

Word Origin & History
candid 1620s, “white,” from L. candidum “white; pure; sincere, honest, upright,” from candere “to shine,” from PIE base *kand- “to glow, to shine” (see candle). In English, metaphoric extension to “frank” first recorded 1670s (cf. Fr. candide “open, frank, ingenuous, sincere”). Of photography, 1929. Related: Candidly.

That is just thesaurus. But when looking at contemporary family and wedding photography it surprised me how accurate this word is and how accurately people adjusted it to the needs of naming an old version of just documentary photography. Anyway. Candid means right up front and truthful but most of all: unpretended as for not staged and not posed. This is a highly fair approach to art of portrait which I try to employ as often as possible. And it also remind me of works of my beloved Nan Goldin but in her case honesty is most accurate word.

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A picture of a human face.

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Portraits of people on the street – what to look for.

Watch your angle..Bend your knees if necessary. Or shoot from above.
I often hear that the best chance for finding an interesting face is on a busy street in a big city and
Best suited for such a project will be prime lens with large maximum aperture, which allows a nice background blur. That is true. But I have taken this portrait in a completely ruined small and disgusting shed far away from busy Dublin City Centre. I just asked this man to pose for me and he agreed.( Lucky me!) I found this shed few days back and was amazed by the fact that the light comes from above from the part of ceiling that suppoposed to be there, but wasn’t existing anymore. I had a Julia Cameron like studio just for myself! With that small difference that she was an elite female photographer. And I am just..: female photographer.
Watch out for the ugly shadows on the face of the model. If possible, use the shade or photograph on cloudy days.
Do not be shy when approaching people. At the beginning is always the hardest. But it pays off.