Shooting Portraits – Part 1 / 3

I enjoy portraiture. Most of my best shots contain people and if I also consider the genres of photography I most enjoy looking at, almost all contain some aspect of portraiture whether it be staged, candid, environmental, fashion or something completely different.

When I think about friends of mine who are great portrait photographers, I am fortunate to know many. Although the following list is nowhere near a comprehensive compilation of the talent out there, a number of names do immediately spring to mind. No list could be complete when talking about portraiture without mentioning Manny Librodo. Although probably more well known for his work with models, I actually think it’s his street / candid portraiture which sets him the furthest apart from the rest. People who know Manny and have grown from his influence also include Suwanee Lennon and Aloha Lavina. I’ve had the pleasure of working with these two talented young women and both are rising stars. For excellent street photographers, you should consider checking out Niall O’Shea, Kal Khogali, Chuck Inglefield or AL. Similarly, Jeff Seltzer’s fantastic Carnivals project is an excellent example of environmental portraiture. David Procter and "Curly Kale‘s" work are a must-see for staged photography (a genre I am particularly fond of also). Finally, for portraiture which spans several genres yet at the same time is hard to pin down because of their unique, respective styles (this is a good thing btw!), see Tommy Oshima or Naoki Hayashi. Once again, the above names are all excellent examples of work with which I’m very familiar – but by no means the only ones. Oh, and of course, if you’re interested there is my own work- click here.

So, given that this is such an interesting topic, I thought I’d put together a mini series on portraiture. I’ve never been completely convinced this kind of medium (i.e. written) is the best way to learn portraiture as it’s something that is best taught in person, but if there’s something useful I can add to the topic, then I’ll happily take the chance and it’ll follow in the next few posts.

When starting this, I felt I could almost go on forever talking about the variations of portraiture, the key factors, the mistakes that are made and how to correct them, etc – but at risk of this series becoming too unwieldy and unreadable, I’ve tried to make this as concise as possible, focusing on the key points and will deliver it over 3 parts.

The first part will be what I believe are the fundamentals – the key factors you can control when shooting portraiture and the main considerations.

Lighting

The first item I’m going to talk about is lighting. When I’ve had the opportunity to teach portraiture, this is one of the most asked about questions and it’s definitely one of the items I spend the most time on. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to describe in words how to find good light – as it’s much easier to show it – but I can explain some of the basic principals that have worked well for me.

The first point to stress when it comes to lighting is that, when you’re in a position to control it, make it your #1 priority. You should, at all costs, avoid shooting portraits in bad light. For me, if the light is bad, I rarely will even bother taking a picture. You should be equally uncompromising. Try to shoot early or late in the day. If it gets towards midday and the light is too harsh, consider changing your point of view slightly to compensate (e.g. shoot from above the model and have her look upwards so this removes the harsh shadows on the face). But in general, go out when the light is good.

You’ll note that I’m mostly talking about natural light when it comes to this. That’s because I don’t use flash for any of my portraits. That’s not to rule it out of course – just it’s not something that I tend to prefer. For a couple of examples follow of why I love natural lighting so much. These are shots of mine which if I wanted to artificially created through studio lights / flash, I honestly wouldn’t know where to begin. All photos by Lawrence Ripsher, click for larger versions.

So, rule #1 – find good light. Well, now that’s clear, the question remains how do you actually recognize good light in the first place? Again, it’s easier to show than to describe but good rules of thumb are check places which are bright, but where the light is not too harsh, not always direct and creates “drama”. Obviously places to try are windows. You certainly don’t have to include them in the shot – remember, we’re after them for their light not their aesthetics. Doorways, buildings where there are cracks in the ceiling, under a tree where the leaves will diffuse the light, etc – these are also good places to try. Avoid fully direct sunlight under most circumstances –unless the quality of the light is really good – such as very late in the day or early in the morning. The light is often either too flat or too harsh. This won’t create a bad picture automatically, but it won’t add any drama either. If you have a reflector (which can be used to reflect light from under the models face and point it upwards) then make use of one. It’s not compulsory tho, I rarely use one because of portability / convenience and the locations I have tended to shoot.

In order to get good light, you don’t necessarily have to be in a dramatic location… In fact, the weather doesn’t even have to be that good if the choice of lighting is good enough – often this is a case of experimenting and find the right place. My “After the Rain” series proves this I think. These were shots taken in our car on a dull, overcast, flatly lit day. Just by moving around in the back of the car, we were able to create dramatic and complimentary lighting and shadows that makes portraiture work so well. An example follows from that series.

Expression / Interaction

I think one of the hardest things about shooting portraiture with models when starting out, is how to actually interact with models. It can sometimes feel awkward or embarrassing – even if you know it shouldn’t. If you feel that way, my best advice to give is to simply shoot with models you know and are comfortable with first, or to go along with a photographer who is good at this and work alongside them. It’s amazing how quickly it is to pick up the basics of direction and interaction when watching someone else do it, so try to take advantage of that. This is absolutely an area worth investing in because the expression of the model and the photographer’s interaction with him / her is key to getting the viewer to later feel emotion from the image. A good portrait can be a number of things, but you’ll know it’s worked when the viewer actually feels something from it. One of the most important things that takes place in a shoot is not necessarily what happens inside the camera, but how the relationship develops between the person behind it and in front of it. Sometimes an environment helps things along (e.g. everyone’s happy on a wedding day) but if you get it right, you’ll find something extra in the shots in any situation and it can be the difference between a good picture of a pretty model and a great picture of a person. I definitely feel that this is also one of the hardest areas of photography to master and it requires diligence and patience.

Beyond that, it’s hard to give specific advice as so much of this is about practice. There are some tips that spring to mind however. One is to take advantage of Digital and interact with the model through the LCD screen. What I often do when shooting a model is occasionally show them photos of themselves when they strike different poses which emphasise a different side of their face (tilted to the left, right, chin tilted back, tilted down, turning into the light, away from the light, etc). Doing this and pointing out their best side is very useful for the model – don’t assume they know already their best angles. This helps the model visualize what you’re looking for. After that I’ve made my main points, I don’t show the model the LCD screen again until after the shoot as doing this too much can become distracting but it’s very useful in the beginning.

Another thing to bear in mind is to not force emotions. Emotions are of course important but spell them out too easily for the viewer and it’ll just look too obvious or cliché. For example, I’ve yet to see a convincing photo of a woman crying in a model shoot… No matter how believable the tears look, we all know it’s forced when viewing it. It’s the same for lots of other poses such as head in the hands in anguish and other over dramatic poses. Oh, and while I’m on the subject, never ever title your photos with the name of the emotion you’re trying to convey unless it really works. If you title your picture of someone looking sad with the word “sadness”, you may as well have drawn a speech bubble. In my early days of photography, I used to like words like “reflection”, “introspection” and so on but they’ve become overused now (or they were always that way and I’ve only noticed this as of late). As a result, I rarely title my posed portrait work these days in a descriptive fashion. An example of that would be all the images from my Fragments work, which follows.

A final consideration of model interaction I wanted to mention was the direction of the face. This aspect should take into account at least three things: Interaction with you (the photographer), a flattering view of the face (or an angle which emphasizes the emotion) and an angle which works with the direction of the light. Although it’s not compulsory, I usually start with the third point and position the model in a good light and then figure out how to best take a photo. An example of where I employed this strategy to good effect can be seen in the following shot.

Composition and technique

Moving on to some of the other fundamentals of composition, there are a few things here to mention so I’ll just rattle through them.

-    Point of view. Remember you don’t just have to be eye level with the model. Being significantly above or below can emphasise emotion and feeling. Consider the following shot for example – here I was attempting to accentuate the specific features of a model called Kaoru. I believe this image would have looked dramatically different (and not as effective) if it were taken level on or from below.

-    Orientation. Don’t get stuck in one mode (landscape or portrait). A photo can look dramatically different if you change the orientation at unexpected times. Camera tilt can sometimes provide an interesting and dramatic surprise but should be kept exactly as that – a surprise. Absolutely do not overdo this.

-    Focus. The subject of your photo should be the eyes. Therefore at least one eye should be sharp. Many prefer two to be sharp but I don’t think this is compulsory. Shooting primes for portraits is great as you can use the wide aperture of the lens to shoot wide open, often creating a dramatic falloff in focus. I’ve always loved that look when it works right – using a shallow DOF while anchoring the image at the eyes. Note that this doesn’t need a full frame sensor to achieve this – my next image should prove that which was shot with a 50mm f/1.4 mounted on an Olympus E-410 (which has a "four thirds" sensor which is cropped more significantly, and therefore has a greater depth of field, than say a D200, 400D or 30D).

-    Composition. The basics dominate here – which means the rule of thirds. So as I’m sure you already know, the rule of thirds suggest that you imagine the image in the viewfinder is divided by two horizontal lines into three equal spaces and two vertical lines into three equal spaces. According to the rule of thirds, your subject should sit on one of the horizontal or vertical lines. Ideally it would sit on an intersection of a horizontal and vertical (although this is less important). So if you’re shooting a face only portrait, the eyes (which are the subject) should be placed along the top horizontal. This will chop off the top of the head and is perfectly fine. Avoid distracting foreground subjects and be careful about placement of the model so that trees and other background objects are not distracting from the subject, rising out of their head and so on.

Right, that covers about as much as I wanted to go into for Part 1. The next two parts will go beyond ‘working with models’, which I’ve covered mostly today and will dip into other aspects such as Environmental and Street portraiture and interesting techniques such as the “faceless” portrait.