Natural Portraits
Shooting Portraits is an art form there are the school portraits that we all know and mostly dislike and the artist portraits crated by the photographers to show more than a snap shot of a mundane and inactive part of the subjects likeness but forget the life & person they capture.
Portrait’s are artistic representation of a person, where the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person whom the portrait is of. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position or interpreted to signify the person and topic or interest of that person.
Portrait photography is a popular commercial industry all over the world. Many people enjoy having professionally made family portraits to hang in their homes, special portraits to commemorate certain events, such as graduations or weddings.
Photography by Rory Witham
Since the dawn of photography, people have made portraits. The middle of the 19th century saw the growth in Portrait photography due in large part to the demand for inexpensive portraiture. Studios sprang up in cities around the world, some cranking out more than 500 plates in a day. The style of these early works reflected the technical challenges associated with 30-second exposure times and the painterly aesthetic of the time. Subjects were generally seated against plain backgrounds and lit with the soft light of an overhead window and whatever other light could be reflected with mirrors.
National Photographer Rory Witham; uses natural environments and interactive subjects and personality to create life-like and more softer and casual photo shoots for portraits that takes the subject and client away from the studio and it’s static and often stark plain back ground as commonly seen in family Portraits.
Personal Portraits of a single person can often be based on looks others maybe of fashion, or environmental portraits.
An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography.
By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.
Photo by Rory Witham
Working with children and young adults often the aim is to keep them active and involved in the things they enjoy, such as parks and playgrounds, while the subject plays they are less prone to stair and grin at the camera and give a more natural and happy expression. Often in studio’s children can become restless and agitated by the environment, where of course a park or activity can allow for the creative capture which we are well known for.
Some more examples can be found on our website, currently we have decommissioned our Portrait Photography business called Portrait People ( http://portraits.nationalphotographer.co.uk/ ) and we will be looking forward to re-establishing the Portrait photography services shortly.
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