I wanted to share with you all how I went about improving my skills around Portrait Photography, which many consider a sub-genre of People Photography. Conquering this skill I think requires overcoming challenges in three broad areas:
Working with People (probably too obvious a technique)
Lighting - Natural and Artificial
Post Processing techniques
Learning the Fundamentals
There is definitely a lot of stuff out there but there is simply so much to learn in Portrait Photography that I recommend that you adopt a certain structure to your learning. After attempting to learn through online tutorials and Meetups (which are also a great source of learning but will discuss about them later), I found that the best way to learn Portrait Photography would be through a class if someone is teaching one.
In my case, I found that my local county college offers Photography Courses, including one on People Photography, which I attended and provided me with a solid foundation.
Whatever learning path you take, ensure you cover these following topics, at a minimum:
Various types of Portrait Photography (Classic/Formal to Senior to Babies, Maternity to Boudoir to Pin-up)
Handling your subjects (people in this case)
Posing techniques
Technical aspects such as lens and lighting
I am of course assuming here that you are already quite adept at photography fundamentals such as knowing how to operate your camera in manual mode, and the Rules of Composition such as the Rule of Thirds. In addition, some exposure to a digital photo organization and editing tool such as Adobe Lightroom is recommended as you will end up with a ton of captures with this genre.
Further Enhancing your Learning
Once you have mastered the fundamentals through some structured learning as I mentioned in the above section, you can then rely on other sources to enhance your learning and ensure that you are constantly upgrading your skills in this discipline. There are some books, online tutorials and YouTube channels that I relied on.
Peter Hurley (@peter_hurley) and Chris Knight (@chrisknightphoto) have both written excellent books and also have online tutorials where they cover many aspects of Portrait Photography including history, business aspects, lighting techniques as well as handling subjects. Specifically, I found the below resources by them extremely helpful:
The Headshot by Peter Hurley
The Dramatic Portrait by Chris Knight
In addition to the above, I found Chris Knight's online Tutorial titled 'Finding Rembrandt' very inspiring and insightful. Check it out if you find it online.
Finally, I would recommend following Adorama's YouTube channel which has a wealth of information including helpful tutorials from some of their regulars and also industry experts and celebrity photographers.
Practicing the Art and Creating Content
Unlike other genres, practicing the art of Portrait Photography requires more resources than you would anticipate. Getting better at this craft requires a lot of practice for which you would need access to willing subjects, proximity to locations, props including clothes and make-up, lighting equipment, to name a few.
I have two strong recommendations that will help you in not only gaining enough practice but also in creating content that you can then leverage to improve your skill, share your work and hopefully gain some clients through that body of work.
While you do that, you will realize that you are also able to overcome the three challenges I mentioned at the beginning, over a period of time
Attend Photography Meetups. You may want to check if there are trained and professional photographers in your neighborhood who are giving back to the community through Meetups focused on Portrait Photography. In the Dallas - Fort Worth area for example there are about half a dozen such Meetups that have been consistently doing workshops over the past decade. I have been a member of at least three of them and attended about six sessions each year over the past five years. Each of these sessions last about three to four hours and give me the opportunity to not just learn but also to network with fellow photographers. These sessions are run by seasoned professionals who share a wealth of knowledge and experience in all aspects of Portrait Photography. Through these sessions I have been able to gain expertise in and exposure to Flash Photography, High/Low/Medium Tone Portrait Photography, Bridal Shoots, Photographing Seniors, Boudoir Photography, to name a few.
Participate in TFPs. TFP stands for Trade-For-Photos or Trade-For-Prints. These are similar to the Meetups above except that these are organized by professionals who come together with the intent of building content for each of their respective skills. These are typically coordinated through Facebook Groups where Photographers, Models, Make-up Artists and some times Studio Owners come together to design a session with a specific theme and shoot pictures. The work is then traded so that each can leverage that content to showcase their contribution.
You can take advantage of the content you created by either of the approaches above to learn and improve your post processing skills.
Finding Inspiration
What I found interesting with Portrait Photography is that the genre is not only deeply rooted in history but also quite prolific and prone to constant change. As a result of which you would need to be exposed to a breadth of content and a wide variety of known experts in the field. Here are a (short) list of professionals whose work I admire and follow (in no particular order):
Irving Penn
Richard Avedon
Robert Frank
Annie Leibovitz, @annieleibovitz
Zach Arias, @zarias
Lindsay Adler, @lindsayadler_photo
Joe Mcnally, @joemcnallyphoto
I have added Instagram handles as well since some of them are really active on Instagram and share their work and insights regularly. I would add Peter Hurley and Chris Knight to the above list as well but avoiding it for the sake of duplicity.
I am setting out to build my Portrait Photography business based on what and how I learnt the nuances of this genre, as I described in this article and certainly hope this helps you too if that is your objective as well. Check out some of my work in the People section here. Hopefully, you found this useful.
Drop me a note if there are questions I can help answer.
Please note that I did not cover much about the Post Processing challenges because I felt that there are already many resources available that can provide awareness of that topic. I might do one at a future date if I see the need.
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