Portrait Photography Tips | Get Closer
© 2011 Wazari Wazir | A Portrait of My Son
“If Your Pictures Aren’t Not Good Enough, You’re Not Close Enough.”
– Robert Capa –
Sometimes it was true, that our picture is not good enough if we are not close enough. But when it comes to portrait photography, we have to look it in a different ways, sometimes we need to leave some space for that particular person to have a room for breath or to have something in the background to add context to the photograph especially if we are talking about environmental portraiture where we need to show to the viewers about the subject, where he work, play or rest but when there is nothing much to tell about the background then it is better for us to get really close to the subject.
Close-up portrait photography have more impact compared to the loose picture of a person. If you fills the frame with just the face of the subject, you will have more strong photograph where nothing will distract the viewers from the person being photograph. I took this photograph of my son form my point of view where he is really close to me, even though there is no eye contact between me and my son but I like his expressive joyful look here and the background behind him is not important in term of story telling, I just wanted to share with the viewers, the expression of my son hence I think close-up work is more suitable than full length portrait.
Talking about expression, I like what well known portrait photographer, Bambi Cantrell once said “Expression Beats Perfection” meaning that if you have great expressive picture, it will always outperform perfect photograph with no expression or emotional impact and getting a close-up portrait of your subject will definitely enhance the impact of your portrait photograph.
