Portrait Photographs

A work situation portrait .

An Actress's publicity Photograph

Portraits of a couple of Tv commercial directors. Direct light and different colour temperature lights make an interesting mood.

Students at work for an educational institution

A young Tv star for a magazine

A Magazine editor

Portrait photography is always one of the main parts of any photography business and mine is no exception . While many photographers might have one particular style of portrait , generally most professionals might have to work in many different styles to cater to different clients. There could be the executive or business portrait , the actor/actress portrait, the candid portrait or the illustrative or character portrait.

Portrait photography can be done in a studio with controlled light , or in a location that says something about the subject ( environmental portraiture) . It can have studio light used or natural light , or a combination of the two . The options are endless and that is even before you get into any kind of digital manipulation.

Different clients might have unique requirements . For example : a magazine might require relaxed "natural" portraiture where a business might need more formal photography,

Avertising and photography for magazines and book always needs to take into account page shapes and also space for titles and text, and because of that it needs to be remembered that

the photograph in itself may not look like the most brilliant composition , but when text or titles is added then they complete the image as was intended

Group portrait photography 2

This image was of one of the people working at the kiwi spit roast barbecue king company, a photography shoot I did for a commercial mayonnaise brand promotion . I used the wonderful 85mm 1.2 canon lens to control the backgrounds with its wide aperture and ability to make interesting things out of areas that may not look so good in focus - of course the wide aperture also gives the opportunity to be more flexible in low light areas so there is less fiddling around with lights etc making the subjects nervous.
Continuing on with the people theme , this was taken earlier this year as a portrait of the production team for a cookbook I was working on . It was carefully staged to look natural - I prefer to work that way so usually pick the location and relax the subjects into it . I used available light and a little bit of flash to compensate for the overhead lighting . I was Pleased with the result as commercial kitchens can look a bit grim sometimes.