Interesting Portraits: Where do you go for inspiration?

[Jeremy Lim]

I've reached my limit with "regular" portraits. They all look like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremylim/3007822630/

Some portraits are just so full of life. Definitely posed, but still convey a stronger message than the typical all-smiles shot. So, when planning a shoot, posing a model, composing a shot, choosing lighting, and even when developing, what do you folks do for inspiration?

For music, I just play. It comes out how it comes out, so I wonder if it's a practice thing, or if there's something you folks could share. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

 

[Dubious Drewski]

search the portrait themed groups in Flickr or join a website like Model Mayhem. Tons of creative portraiture oozes from those places.

 

[JerryPH]

In portraiture, you are really drawing with light (the greek word for photo and graphy). Two things...

- Learn how to light your subjects. Flat lighting = flat pictures.

- One of my inspirational sources once said "if you want to make a picture interesting... don't light all of it".

All that to say... visit the strobist group on flickr and check out the good and not so good portrait shots there and learn from them. There are also a ton of good portraiture books on the market.

Finally, don't limit yourself to just photography and pics, but look at the great works of art from around the world, use them as examples, exploit their expertise and then develop your own feel or style for doing things your way.

Have it your way... oh wait, that was burger king. Well, you know what I mean.

 

[ChrisOquist]

I have a couple of book recommendations:

1. Yesterday my company had a farewell dinner for me (moving on to a new opportunity), and one of my coworkers gave me a book called Individuals. It's a collection of portraits of celebrities from The Gap's collection. There's a lot of really amazing portraits in there, by photographers like Annie Leibovits, Christian Witkin, Michael Jansson, Herb Ritts. Really amazing stuff in there. I highly recommend it.

2. Today, while I was at Barnes and Noble, I came across this book:

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Lighting-Dramatic-Portrait-Celebrity-Photography/dp/0817442278/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226102108&sr=8-1[/ame]

A lot of really interesting and different portraits, and a lot of them contain tons of information on the equipment used, a writeup on the shoot, and a layout of the positioning of lights, camera, etc.!

Very cool.

(Great portrait by the way..)

 

[Alleh Lindquist]

David LaChapelle does very creative portraits.

Rather than capturing an image of the person try and think of it as capturing someone’s personality in the image.

 

[notelliot]

you should be able to find a copy of a "workbook" or "blackbook" from a local agency. steal ideas from that.

 

[Alleh Lindquist]

Just start playing around with diffrent lighting. I was practicing some new stuff today and came up with this

If you check out my flickr account I also posted a lighting setup image.

 

[Jeremy Lim]

Thanks so much for the suggestions, guys! Time to start digging.

Alleh, I LOVE That shot. That is super hot.