Why a portrait tells you more than a face
There is a photo of me I have kept in my phone’s camera roll for years. Not because I look good in it, but because I look honest in it. It was 2019, I was under pressure, and you can see it. Not from anything I am doing or saying in the photo, but from something in my eyes. Something in the way my shoulders hang.
That is what a good portrait does. It shows what you cannot explain.
The difference between a photo and a portrait
A passport photo is a photo of your face too, but it is not a portrait. A portrait is about who you are at the moment the photographer presses the button. Not who you want to be, not how you want to come across on LinkedIn. Who you are.
That sounds airy, but it is just photography. Light, composition, timing. The only thing that makes the difference is whether someone takes the time to get to know you before picking up a camera.
What goes wrong in a standard session
You know how it goes. You make an appointment, drive somewhere, someone is waiting with a camera, you do not know what to do with your hands, you produce a smile and two hours later you are sitting in your car thinking: so that was that.
The problem is not the photographer. The problem is time. Or the lack of it.
A portrait needs time. Not for the technique, but for the relaxing. The first twenty minutes in front of a camera are almost always lost time. Everyone tenses their shoulders, pulls in their stomach, smiles a little too broadly. Only after that, when the photographer stops counting and starts looking, does something happen.
What honest portrait photography looks like to me
I do not start by photographing. I start with coffee. And a conversation. Sometimes about your work, sometimes about what is on your mind, sometimes about nothing in particular. What happens then is that you relax. Not because I do anything special, but because you get a moment of room to be who you are.
And then, at the moment you forget I am there, I pick up my camera.
The photo you get is not a photo of what you look like. It is a photo of who you are. That sounds grand, but it is the result of taking enough time.
That is what I mean by honest portrait photography. Not a style, not a filter. A way of working.
➡ More about how a PAUSE portrait session works and what to expect