Often times, we feel portraits should be of a person looking at the camera and saying cheese. These portraits can be really great and fulfilling and most definitely have their place.
I tend to take a slightly different approach to portraits and fine art work. Everyone has a beautiful and unique gift to give. Whether you play a musical instrument, knit baby booties or are a computer programmer; we all have a light shining from within. Now, I don’t mean to sound cliche with that. I mean it in all seriousness and it is that very quality, that unique gift that is your and only yours that I am looking to capture in a fine art portrait.
Speaking of fine art portrait, what makes something a fine art portrait and another a only a portrait?
Well there is no real black or white answer to that. Loosely speaking a portrait is when a client comes in and wants a family picture, child portrait or a head shot of some sort. It is the making of a photograph for a client’s specific needs. Like I said these can be extremely fulfilling and quite lovely. With a fine art portrait, the concept, composition and lighting of a shoot is left entirely to the artist, they envision how and where to shoot, how that image will be processed and what the final creation should look like. Often times this is creating art for the sake of art, but not always. It can mean a client comes to them and wants them to create something for them and that the final photograph will be left up to the photographer to create in it’s entirety.
Below art some fine art images I did. These young girl’s special gift, among other things, is the gift of dance. I wanted to capture some fine art portraits in way that was unique to these specific to these young ladies.
