I have always found portrait photography to be extremely intimidating, and because of that, I’ve avoided it. In the past, I have gravitated toward photographing architecture more than anything. It’s not hard to make an inanimate building look good (or at a minimum, interesting).
People are entirely different. Every individual has their own unique angles and expressions and poses that do and don’t work for them. A talented photographer can find those angles almost instantly, and work the rest out in post-production. A hobbyist or amateur, like myself, can only hope to get lucky and learn along the way.
I was thinking the other day … not only is portrait photography challenging, but portraits of men are especially difficult to shoot. Making a pretty girl look cute in a glamour shot isn’t nearly so difficult, in my opinion, as photographing a man and not having it come out looking overly posed, girly, or just plain hokey.
I’ve been looking for inspiration all over. I love some of the classic photography on The Impossible Cool (specifically, see examples of Marlon Brando, Carey Grant, Dean Martin and Sean Connery … epitome of cool). Of course there’s also the amazing Annie Leibovitz and David LaChapelle. I love their work, because not only are they portraits, they are also works of art in that they illicit an emotion or convey a story more-so than just capturing a pretty face.
So I’ve decided to make it my mission to learn how to photograph people, specifically men. Lucky for me, I have a willing victim guinea pig to experiment with. More accurately, I have four willing models, because Mike’s band, Casting Shadows, needs promotional photos.
I’ve been out with Mike, giving myself a bit of a crash course. We have come up with some fantastic ideas that I hope to execute at some point, when we have the time and money to gather a few props and costume items. But for now, we’re working with whatever interesting settings we stumble upon, and I’m learning a lot along the way already.
There was also a professional videographer there tonight who shot video of one of their songs. I’m anxious to see the results of that.
