I love having a project to aim at and thanks to Strobist and Clay Enos I’ve found one. Urban portraits!

The prospect of taking pictures of complete strangers creates all sorts of feelings. I like Clay’s approach in the video above. At some point every photographer has to overcome that barrier, whether it’s a portrait session, wedding or whatever. The subject needs to be comfortable with you, and you need to be comfortable with that process. Clay doesn’t give the subjects much time to think about the situation, and as a result comes away with some great results.

Can I translate this into a series of portraits of my sleepy New Forest village? I don’t know. But I’ll relish the challenge!

The fine weather this last weekend brought out all the kids from the street on to the patch of grass we call the green. A perfect opportunity when they’re such willing models too!

The autofocus combination works really well between the D700 and 70-200, I had the continuous mode set for when the kids were on their bikes and hurtling towards me with no sense of fear (or lens cost). The majority of the shots were shot on single point AF, in shutter priority set to 1/200th sec to avoid camera shake. I know the VR should save me a couple of stops as well – force of habit.

Reading on the internet there’s a fair bit of criticism on the 70-200, mostly around the vignetting that you can alledgedly see when using the lens on a full frame camera. I haven’t noticed any problems myself, except my lack of muscles. The weight of the lens will make you struggle if the shoot goes on a while, I’m keeping a weather eye out for a monopod.

I love portraits with longer lenses – the perspective gives a more flattering image. Tie this in with the bokeh (blurred background) caused by the wide aperture and you get an idea why I love this lens.