portraiture

Portraits are said to be made up of 4 different aspects, such as: face, pose, clothing and location. you can use these different aspects to create a photo best suited to the subject.

"portrait is a means employed to establish the identity of the sitter"


Portraits are thought out to be shot at weddings birthdays and other various ceremonies however Bates argues that they are an 'art of description' which make up peoples social identity examples like passport photos that act as a legal identity. portraits are also a common form of advertisement when it comes to fashion, there are various different things that can be used to make up a trait such as : props, costumes and backgrounds, however it is the social identity that is the performance for the camera.

A portrait can be set up to reveal whatever personality you want depending on what the subject is wearing, this is very important to bear in mind as that means the photographer can decide what he ants the viewer to see depending on the composition of the photo. A particular pose can also be described as the punctum as it stands out and brings the viewers attention to the photo.







On the left you can see an old portrait, this particular portrait is called a 'Carte De Viste' which was a small photograph created by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri. As you can see it has all the aspects that make up a good portrait and judging by the nice furniture you could assume he is of the higher class, you can also assume this from his posture and the way he is standing.

This was a portrait I found in an article written by 'Peter Ross' and at first glance you can easily assume that she is a fisherman as the props are the nets and the location is a lake where she obviously fishes he pose is relaxed connoting a relaxed attitude to a familiar place she comes to often. these are the sort of seniors that can be read to determine what the photo is about.






Here you can see I have created a contact sheet of portraits I took where I also experimented with a flash gun, when shooting these portraits I tried to experiment with some various different poses on a subject who I wasn't that familiar with.

This is the first portrait I took with the flash, I tried not to give much away on the first one but as you can see by the subjects jewellery and hair he is quite an interesting individual.

I then asked my subject to strike a pose which reveals a lot more about my subjects personality as you can see his tattoos and his facial expression show that he is quite a confident person. I did this to reveal that with one change of a pose it can be established that something or someone is not as they seem.