READ: Portrait Photography Introduction

Portraits Qwiki

The following qwiki is very informative about what portrait photography is and how to best capture your subject.

View Portrait photography and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

History

People have been making portraits for a long time. This painting of St. Philip was made in 1516 by Albrecht Dürer, a German painter. If you look at some of his other portraits you'll see examples of characteristics still common in modern portrait photography today.

Light source and background

Here's a portrait of Kathleen from Tim_D's Flickr stream. It's one of the many portraits hosted on flickr.com. Notice how the light source is from the side of her face. This creates shadows and helps add depth to the image. You'll find the same technique was used in the painting of St. Philip. Also notice that Kathleen is not facing directly into the camera. She is turned about 45 degrees to one side. You'll also notice that the background in both images here is either blurred or is dark to focus the viewer towards the face. A busy background can detract from the subject so most portraits have soft backgrounds.

Cropping

Sometimes you can create interesting portraits by cropping the photo. Here's a good example from Stephanie Deissner's Flickr Stream. This portrait adds a prop (the red towel) and even crops the face of the subject but the result is very effective.

Cropping Continued

Here's one more example where the image cropping was very effective and the background helps tell a story too. It's from Striatic's Flickr stream.

Look at Portraits

Your first task is to LOOK at portrait photography. Look to discover how light, shadow, composition, background and environment all play a part in the creating of great photographs. Spend some time browsing through the portrait collection on Flickr.com.