In class, we were taking profile pictures. Profile as in a picture from a side view. My subject was Ben and I took many different angles and settings (all from the side to make it profile). I felt that this was my best shot
for many reasons like the angle, lighting from the sun coming through the tree, the environment around him like the trees, the branches, etc. Also he looks very happy which makes it a good profile shot.
After doing a presentation on Steve McCurry and Sebastiao Salgado in class, we were assigned to take a picture inspired by one of their pictures. I chose Afghan Girl by Steve McCurry. This is his most famous photo known for being on the cover of National Geographic. I then took a picture of my friend Ben and had him pose like the girl in the photo. The title is Chefghan because Ben is sometimes called Chef then I merged the two titles. http://www.stevemccurry.com/main.php
I learned a lot by reading the advice these websites gave. I mostly read the information from the first site, the one with the pictures, I felt this site had more information and examples. This site was http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/2008/02/what_makes_a_great_portrait.html. The two most important things I learned about a good portrait was the lighting and emotion. A good portrait needs to have good light, or look artistic. One common method to look artistic was change the photo to black and white. For a portrait to have emotion, the subject needs to look naturally emotional, it can't be obvious that they are posing. I am using this picture of Ben, because I think he did a good job ignoring the camera which gave the portrait good emotion.
I took a picture of the drinking fountain, then I photoshopped the water from another picture so it would look like water was coming out, then I photoshoppped my friend Ben so it would look like he was drinking. I did this because we were working in photoshop and we just learned how to use the extract tool, and I like to make Ben the subject of my photos. :)
This is a picture of my friend Ben. One can learn a lot from only looking at this picture. Ben is a very friendly and smiley young man. As you can see, he's also very good with computers.
for many reasons like the angle, lighting from the sun coming through the tree, the environment around him like the trees, the branches, etc. Also he looks very happy which makes it a good profile shot. 
I took a picture of the drinking fountain, then I photoshopped the water from another picture so it would look like water was coming out, then I photoshoppped my friend Ben so it would look like he was drinking. I did this because we were working in photoshop and we just learned how to use the extract tool, and I like to make Ben the subject of my photos. :)