Senior Photography | On Location Portraiture

© 2009 Wazari Wazir | Senior Photography

Portrait photography or portraiture is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people (a group portrait), in which the face and expression is predominant. The objective is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the subject. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is the person’s face, although the entire body and the background may be included. A portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the camera. ( Wikipedia )

Personally for me there is a lot of other element that will make or break a portrait session, if we want to shoot on-location portraiture, it is always good to scout few location first, maybe few days or week in advance before the actual photo shoot, whether it is for client or for personal purpose. Once we found a good location then we can visualize in our mind what props or clothing that will work well with the surroundings or  blend well with the location or the environment.

Other than good location, clothing also play a very important role to make a portrait shot successful, patterns or words tend to be distracting. The brighter the patterns, the more distracting they will be. Plain or solid colors always work best, too much colors tend to be distracting, we must remember that when we shoot portrait of a person, it’s about the “person”, not the clothing, unless we shoot a fashion show where a models, wear crazy and fancy looking outfit, the emphasize is not on the model face but the clothing or the fashion.

So keep in mind that if we want to shoot a portrait of a person make sure that their clothing complement or blend well with the person not become a distracting element. It was very easy to know whether the clothing is good or not for a portrait. If we look at a portrait picture, which one draw our eyes first, is it the clothing or the person face? Once we get the right clothing then with the right surroundings or environment our on-location portrait shot will work wonder.

About the editing for  the picture above, I did use one of the technique in my Photoshop Tone eBook but I tone down the color a bit to get this mute color effect, some like to call it Retro Color Effect.

Related Post : The Importance of Location

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