Expert opinion Shoot a character dressed in Shakespearean costume

Challenge 1 Natalia Kazemzadeh

Shakespeare was smiling on us when we assembled for a day’s photography in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. The tourist count was low, and sunshine had replaced the gloomy weather of the previous days. Fingers crossed for a bardy brilliant time…

Our first port of call was Shakespeare’s Birthplace on Henley Street. This is the hub of all the Shakespeare attractions, and a £22.50 ticket covers all five properties.

Tour guides in period costume were busy entertaining a group of visitors in the rear garden of the house. Their colourful costumes and animated role-playing made an ideal photo opportunity. “I thought this would make a great image because the actor really seemed to be ‘in the zone’,” says Natalia. “The biggest challenge was to get a crisp focus, since he had some vivid facial expressions. I used my zoom lens because I wanted a close-up on the face. When I do close-ups, I tend to go for f/5.6, as this makes the subject sharp and in focus. It also gives me quite a shallow depth of field so the attention focuses on the subject, like here, on the actor.” Despite a relatively slow shutter speed of 1/40 sec, Natalia’s shot remains sharp in all the right places. She’s thrown the background completely out of focus, and the bokeh makes for a pleasing portrait. In terms of composition, though, we’d like to see more space around the subject.