Une Femme

A close up black and white picture of my wife Aura posing for yours truly, wearing fashion sunglasses. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

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Portraiture or Portrait Photography

For those of you who are new to the term, portraiture is a photography of a person or group of people that displays the expression, personality, and mood of the subject. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is usually the person’s face, although the entire body and the background may be included.

According to Wikipedia:

“Portrait photographs have been made since virtually the invention of the camera. The relatively low cost of the daguerreotype in the middle of the 19th century led to a general rise in the popularity of portrait photography over painted portraiture. The style of these early works reflected the technical challenges associated with long exposure times and the painterly aesthetic of the time.

Subjects were generally seated against plain backgrounds and lit with the soft light of an overhead window and whatever else could be reflected with mirrors. Advances in photographic equipment and techniques developed, and gave photographers the ability to capture images with shorter exposure times the making of portraits outside the studio.”

I always admired this category of photography, but was timid to dip my toes into its waters.  Most of my pictures of persons are taken from a distance.  Yesterday I adventured taking a portrait picture of my wife.  I know it’s amateurish and of low quality, but you have to start from zero.  I’ll dedicate some time practicing more in the future.  The Twisters will be glad to help me out.

This is the picture of my wife Aura.  Here we go.

Portraiture of my wife Aura in a thinking posture. This is my first adventure into this category of photography. Promise to study and practice more. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

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A Representative Sample of the Exquisite Paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci was a remarkable man; a person with exceptional skills in many areas of human knowledge, but he excelled the most in his paintings.  Leonardo was an Italian polymath:  painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.  He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.

Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

During my recent sojourn to the exhibition at the Anthropological Museum Reina Torres de Araúz, I had the rare opportunity of enjoying several of Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings.  They were of the highest quality, adequately displayed and properly illuminated with bright spotlights.

Below are a few of Leonardo’s paintings as a sample of his prodigious work.  Enjoy, and don’t forget to click on the image if you wish to enlarge it.  Here we go.

Photograph of Leonardo Da Vinci's, Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (The Lady With An Ermine), about 1489-1519). Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Snapshot of Portrait of a Woman (La Belle Ferronnièré), another one of Leonardo Da Vinci's famous paintings. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

A close up view of the previous painting, (La Belle Ferronnièré). The quality of this portrait is impossible to describe in printed words. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photograph of The Annunciation (1475-1480)---Uffizi, is thought to be Da Vinci's earliest complete work. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

 The interest in Leonardo’s genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyze his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found.  Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, said: “Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge … Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe.”

I incorrectly said yesterday, that this would be my last blog post on Leonardo Da Vinci.  I forgot I had also taken several pictures of Da Vinci’s ingenious inventions.  If you don’t mind, they will be posted tomorrow.  If you return—and I hope you will—you will understand why Leonardo Da Vinci is considered a genius, a painter and an inventor.  I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.  Until then, Adiós. 

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A Flower in Bloom

If you have children of your own, or have been near children, you already know the pleasure of watching them grow.  Children are like flowers slowly developing and blooming into beautiful human flowers–specially if they are girls.

Karol, our grandniece, has been very close to us and we have monitored her growth and developing into a girl from a miniscule baby when she was born.  She’s now three years old, but looks much older.  When her mother dressed her with a pollera, she blossomed into a beautiful tropical flower.  Karol carries the latin “raza” proudly and graciously over her shoulders.  This is Karol, wearing her first pollera.

Photograph of Karol holding up her pollera like a large blue butterfly. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Karol carries the latin "raza" with pride. Her Spanish roots are unmistakable. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

This is what I mean about the blooming of a flower. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photograph of Karol, our grandniece, posing for the camera like an angel passing through my room. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Portraiture of Karol displaying her character and beauty. I sometimes wonder how she will look like when she's 15 years old. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

A close up picture of our grandniece Karol all dressed up with a Panamanian pollera. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

After taking this picture, I now believe in angels. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Children grow up so fast, that one day you wake up and your child has transformed into an adult.  The magic age of youth has vanished in a wink of an eye.  We should spend as much time as we possible can with our children while they’re still children to capture their charm and purity.  Good Day.

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Portraits

Last Monday it was my wife  nephew’s  39th birthday.  A happy event for our small family.  My wife decided to go out and celebrate at a restaurant in Albrook Mall with Alcibidades and his kids, Titi and Abdiel.   Abdiel’s godmother, Misela,  joined the bandwagon.

Before driving over to Albrook, I took  several pictures of our teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy family for posterity.  The occasion also was ideal to get my feet wet with portraits.  Taking pictures of people is one of the most complicated and complex activities for a serious photographer.  There are too many variables to consider.  This technique is called portraiture.

Be definition a portraiture is a visual representation of individual people, distinguished by references to the subject’s character, social position, wealth, or profession.  In a nutshell, portraitures are images of people.  Many portraiture photographers, intentionally alter the appearance of their subjects by embellishing or refining their images to emphasize or minimize particular qualities (physical, psychological, or social) of the subject.  

I tried to use the Diamond Pose model to take my first formal portrait photographs following several suggestions I recently read in a photography book.  The subjects are seated in such a way that they create the shape of a diamond with their grouped faces.

These are my experimental portrait photographs of Alcibiades (a.k.a. Maxi) and his family.  Here we go.

Photograph of Alcibiades (left), my wife (center), Abdiel (right) and Karol (bottom). (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

Photograph of Alcibiades and his two children, Abdiel and Karol. Karol poses for the camera with a unique style. Nobody told her to pose like this; it was a spontaneous action. (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

You cant't beat the smile of a child. Karol (girl) couldn't hide her jolliness. (Credit: Omar Upegui R.)

We couldn’t have children, so Karol and Abdiel are the pupils of our eyes.  Their father is the nearest to what we can call a son.  Happy Birthday Maxi!  Good Day.

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