Portraits
By Lucius Luther
26 April 2008
People love to look at photos of other people. It takes skill and practice to make a good portrait. Here is how I approach them. I have to be in contact with the subject. I like to talk to the people I photograph. We have to have a relationship, even if it is only transitory. I need to have a glimpse of their soul or their essence. That is the easy part. I tell myself that I should look at them, from all angles and positions. What is it about them that I want to capture? Why do I want to have their portrait in my portfolio (besides that they are paying me)? What makes me so very capable of providing an image or two they we can agree on?
Easy...we might not. I might see something in them that they do not. They may have a much different expectation for what and who they are than what you see.
Portraiture is a collaboration. It is a stealth moment in time that should give the viewer an indication of who your subject is and who the photographer is.
Babies look good in light. Teenagers look great almost all the time, if you capture them at the right time. Mood affects image. Mood affects interaction between you and the camera. Recently I took my daughter to my studio and met a co-worker with her family there. She did the makeup for a model I was working with. While she completed her task, I took photos of my daughter and co-worker's daughter. They were stiff and rigid at first, so we gave them the ideas that we have about who they are. After about 20 minutes the kids started to forget about the camera and to play with the situation. I was not sure where we were going to end up, but I did not that the process was going to have some wonderful impact on the final images.
I shot about 100 frames with just simple short lighting and a black backdrop. This turned into a special session though because now the girls were stretching themselves. They were allowing themselves to try on new personae. But they could see the results.
So this has been a long process where I share with you how I choose to engage my subjects. As a social worker, I talk with people all day long about everything. As a photographer I talk with people about who they are and what they want to show the world about who they are. In order to do that we have to laugh, stretch, test, push, relax, take a breath and risk failure.
1) Think about your lighting.
2) Think about the shadows. As one of the gurus recently told me in a workshop, find that person's best side. We are not purely symmetrical. Photographers can flatter a subject by using great lighting, composition, DOF, and posing. On the other hand, we can make the natural look grotesque by not having good posing, lighting, composition or DOF.
3) Basic...try to focus sharply on at least one eye, and preferably both. Try to eliminate the background as a distraction, but be aware that too shallow DOF is as bad as too much background.
4) Watch your viewfinder for poles, candles and a host of other objects sticking up from the heads, and shoulders of your subjects. Many of our cameras have DOF preview buttons; find yours and learn to use it.
5) Take more images than you think you might need. The darkroom is not the place to figure out that you missed on posing or DOF. Use a variety of f-stops and shutter speeds.
6) Finally, look at some great portraits to learn how you can improve your style and ability.
7) Shoot and evaluate.
8) Implement what you learned.
9) Shoot some more and learn to break the rules to conform with your own creative process.
10) Accept that you might need to use a tripod (eliminate blur and camera shake) or use faster film like an ISO 400 or boost your ISO on your digital.
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