Portrait of a Japanese person

(Click to enlarge)

This is Masaya, 19 years old and a Japanese student here at Kansai Gaidai. I first met him when he approached me at the university and told me that he was planning to go to Sweden this summer and that he wanted to know more about my country and about places to go and things to see.

I would describe him as a very energetic, outgoing and social person. He have a lot of friends and seems to feel most comfortable with people around him. This is the main reason I wanted to take a picture of him where he is around other people, interacting with them and in this way really show the very social and friendly side of him. I also decided to crop the picture so that Masaya is the only person who is entirely in the picture, to emphasize that he is the person being portrayed. I experimented in Photoshop with different filters and for a while I considered making it black and white but I felt that it would go a bit cold, sad and not as quite as alive without the (already few) colors in the picture so I ended up using the original palette. 

(Click to enlarge)

Before taking the first picture I took a few pictures of Masaya by himself. He would do these different crazy poses in every single picture, and I think that this really shows the playful and energetic side of his personality. 

He really seemed to have a great time in front of the camera and enjoyed both watching the pictures and showing them to his other friends. Him being so satisfied with them is also a reason why I wanted to use one of these "posing"-pictures, if he thinks that they turned out good I also feel good about the portrait.