Everything You’ve Been Told About How to Take a Photo is Wrong
What's the right lens to use for a portrait photograph? Does it matter if your images are flattering to the subject? What exactly are you trying to say with your images? Everywhere you look people will love to tell you what the "correct" lens is to use to create your images.
When I was part of a professional organization, participating in competitions, some of the things that about the judging and critiquing that always bothered me were the assumptions being made about the image, you would hear things like:
“They used the wrong lens for portraits.”
“That's not a flattering photo of the subject.”
“The light is too flat.”
“The light is too hard.”
Let's go back to that question: What is the right lens to use to take a portrait? To me, the answer is: the lens that you've chosen to put on your camera. That's the right lens, whatever lens you intended to use to get the desired result.
What I think is most often missing when people critique photography is an attempt to understand the photographer's intent. What does the image communicate? What is it trying to communicate? Does it succeed in communicating that message? Also, you don't actually need to know what the message is to make an interpretation. When you go to an art gallery and look at art on the walls, do you know the intent that the artist was trying to make?
If you're looking at an image and just intrinsically judging the technicality in terms of things being “right” or “wrong,” you've completely failed to consider the intent and you have not taken into consideration the fact that the artist has a voice. You are judging technicality with the omission of the artists voice and I don't think you can do that with photography. What you should be asking is how does this image make me feel? I love Lauren Greenfield’s work. She refers to herself as a visual anthropologist, and she’s got a fantastic book, one that I have on my shelf, called Generation Wealth, and I absolutely love it.
Whether or not you think a client would hang an image of themselves on a wall does not mean that the photographer has done anything “wrong,” especially when you consider editorial photography. If you look at a portrait and think only within the realm of “Are they going to want to pay money for this image and hang this image on their wall, or put this image into a photo album?” you're failng to consider that there are so many other reasons why a photograph may have been taken.
Platon photographs Robert De Niro in his signature style
Take, for example Platon’s portraits. Platon’s portraits are wider angle, they're close up, there's some distortion, but they're absolutely amazing, powerful images. I would just hate to hear someone say to him, that he's “used the wrong lens.”
How do you shoot a proper portrait? Shoot with intent. It doesn't matter what that intent is. Have an idea and execute it. Work it until you get there, figure it out, play around with it. There is no wrong way to take a photo. Do what inspires you get out of your comfort zone, experiment, play around.
Next Steps
Force yourself to shoot with one lens and one setting that you don't normally use, do this for a bit and figure it out. Maybe set up a day at the studio or go out and shoot an event.
This is something I did last year at a local marathon. The race has two relays, one with two legs and one with three legs. I went specifically the two person relay because I wanted to shoot gritty portraits at 50mm in black and white, and I didn't want them to look like happy or joyful. I wanted the subjects to look like people who just finished running a half-marathon. So, I went to the finish line for the first leg of the race and photographed people right as they came off the race, literally feet away from the finish line, exhausted sweaty.
I shot a whole collection of images, same camera, same lens, same settings, same look. I used a beauty dish, took it into the field. My friend Eric held up a white V-flat (which you can see in one of the images below) — just a piece of Bristol board behind them.
Shoot with intention and you’ll never shoot an image “wrong” again. Whatever that means.
Photographs of the Around The Bay Race by Kevin Patrick Robbins.
