Portraiture Advice From A Beginner

Portraiture From a Beginner

Mr. Smith, Greater Johnstown Senior High School Principle

To a young photographer with little to no experience, portraiture can be a very daunting experience to try.

A portrait is any photograph where your subject is a person, although normally, a portrait is more of a posed photo instead of the more candid ones.

This photo here is of my niece, Aria, when we went for a hike one day in the woods near her aunt's house.

The reason portraiture is a little scary to most new photographers is because it can seem so formal, like something that only professionals can really do, but in reality, that's not true. Every time you lift you camera and take a picture of another person, you are taking a portrait.

My brother, Melvin, and his daughter, Arial. 

To take a portrait, you don't necessarily have to bring your subject into a studio and spend twenty minutes getting a perfect pose out of them. Just try to capture their personality in your photos. That's really the ultimate goal of any portrait photographer, to just capture the personality of their subject and tell a story about the person with a photo.

When you're taking a photo of someone, do your best to make them feel comfortable. If they're nervous about being in front of the camera, you won't capture an authentic vision of who they are, because everyone acts different whenever they're in front of a camera. 

Make your subject forget that the camera is there. Make them think you're just a normal person-one of their friends even, and that's how you get the most genuine depiction of who a person truly is.