Different Styles of Portraiture

A family portrait does not require the family to be looking at the camera or smiling.

Today many people expect that for a good family portrait everyone has to be looking at the camera and smiling. Smiling in family portraits started in America during the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930’s. At that time Kodak was making it even easier and less expensive for amateurs to take their own photographs. Families liked these images with smiles because it was a way of displaying everything was “all right.” It is a very good message, which remains the most popular style of family photography today.

While it remains a personal choice of each client, many clients and most photographers recommend the smiling faces looking at the camera are best for small gifts prints (less than 11×14) and albums. Wall art is more timeless without “teethe” smiles. Eyes and a smile without teeth are the most emotional appealing in wall art. Contemporary portraits where eyes are not looking at the camera work well with those who enjoy smiling subjects.

Relationship/Contemporary.

In contemporary/relationship portraits, family members are looking at and engaged with each other, not at the camera, and most often smiling. The interactions are as simple as holding hands, looking at each other and walking towards or away from the camera! Or, a parent and child looking into each other’s eyes! Or, a family sitting on the ground with everyone looking at each other smiling! Not looking at the camera (a candid image) allows the viewer to view the subject without intruding and allows the viewer to gaze longer and deeper.

Classical/Traditional.

In classical portrait paintings, people are rarely smiling and often not looking at the viewer. The lack of a smile enables the observer to get a better understanding of who the person is. Many of today’s most successful portraiture studios lean heavily towards non-grinning character studies. Hugging with eyes and a slight curl of the lips can display a huge amount of emotion!

If you are not sure which style is best for you & want to explore the possibilities, we can do that with you. Just tell us and we will provide you a variety of options!

Our Style is Art Focused Storytelling

What is art focused storytelling?

Capturing the Emotion of the Moment:

Storytelling photography starts with capturing the emotion at the “perfect moment.” Just before or just after is not perfect. Skilled storytelling photographers watch the story unfolding before them and anticipate when the emotion will peak (Mom is playing with her child. – Capture the moment their eyes “lock!” – It all happened in an instant and gone forever if not captured!). The anticipation is similar to a baseball batter “reading the pitch.” A great batter “sees” more messages and can better anticipate where the ball will be. People “telegraph” changes in expression! The skilled photographic storyteller reads these messages in order to capture the images at the perfect moment. A photographer attains those skills by observing people for thousands of hours with their eyes to the camera and pressing the shutter to take thousands of images.

Artfully Enhancing Each Image:

Like Master Painters, photographers can enhance the emotion conveyed to the viewer in an image by hiding elements that are distracting and accentuating elements that are the center of attention and full of emotion. In the studio the photographer has control of background, lighting and directs the posing of the subjects. Subject’s faces are usually bright to attract the viewer’s attention while light to their hands and feet are blocked to keep attention away. However, while capturing the spontaneous emotions of in an environmental setting, the photographer has less control over the environment as the image is captured. But the photographer has tools to assist with post production of the image. A distracting object can be removed. Likewise, adding some blurring, changing to B&W, or in other ways modifying the color palette in the image can make the emotion more expressive! The way “Master Classical Painters” loaded different colors on their paint brushes created a color contrast that makes the colors vivid and the image “real.” Photographers can similarly modify the color contrast to direct the viewers’ attention and raise the interest and emotion of the viewer.

Creatively Weaving the Images to Tell Your Story:

The placement and relative size of images can also unite and delineate the story of the combined images. We have many products that allow images to be combined into more complete stories. These include: Albums (2-page spreads are chapters & all the chapters tell the complete story), Wall Art products like: Collections (multiple independent images placed near each other with intent), Collages (multiple independent images on one print) and Composites (Multiple images smoothly integrated into a story).

The father & child playfully tickling is often filled with various emotions. One image may not convey that complete story. But multiple images in different settings may better capture the complete story. When developing a multiple image story, the image with the strongest emotion is often the “anchor image.” By making this image larger the viewers’ attention can be intentionally drawn to that image. The other images show other emotions, but they are more supportive. They “develop and support the main plot” in the photographic story. Love can be expressed in so many ways!

Our Promise to You

As Art Focused Storytellers we have developed a very intentional and methodical style of Portraiture. It starts with the skill of photojournalism to capture the emotion of the moment, adds the skills of an artist to fully develop the emotions of the image, and ends with the storytelling skills of a graphic artist.

Our goal is to make you “delighted” with the quality of our products and services! Just “satisfied” is not good enough! We are committed to you!