WORK WITH PEOPLE
Professional portrait and lifestyle photographer Holly Wren delivers her top advice on the skills you need to master to shoot successful portraits
Holly Wren serves up her top pro advice for capturing people pictures
A good portrait photograph is made up of many elements. Considering lenses, light and location are key, but the final and arguably most important element is the subject of the portrait and their engagement with the photographer, because it can be that alone that takes a good portrait to a great portrait. The image isn’t a portrait without a subject, and some of the best images are achieved by a strong pose and engagement.
Whether you’re photographing models or inexperienced ‘real’ subjects, there is always an element of directing required. This starts with the brief, considering the location, the props, the purpose of the image, through to the interaction with your subject and ending with the final image.
As the photographer it is your responsibility to capture the subject as you’ve planned. The client, the model and the team will be looking to you for that direction, after all it is you looking through the lens. Although it might sound daunting, experience and instinct will help guide you and with a few key considerations and learned hacks, you can create memorable, engaging images.
‘Posing’ is often thought of as a placed hand on the hip, a tilt of the head, or a flick of the hair, but the ‘posed’ generation of images are making way for shots that look ‘unposed’. In reality however, these unposed shots still take a lot of thought and preparation to make them look seamlessly undone. So whether you want the perfect pose, or the perfect ‘unpose’, it’s important to take control of the framing, and direct the model to the shot you have planned, while always considering the needs and preferences of your subject.