I want to learn how to become a great portrait photographer

[Alastair]

I have only been shooting two years this month. When I started out my goal was to be an extremely rounded photographer. I found that I really love to shoot street photography and the people are the trilling part.
I'm getting ask to shoot people all the time now but I am so critical of my photography that I do not want to take on a job until I am good at it. That is one reason for my post. To get some direction on how to study portrait photography. I have an idea, composition, lighting and posing but there is so much info out there I haven't figured out how or where to start.

When people ask you to shoot their portrait, it's generally because of the style you've already demonstrated - not the one you've decide you want to change it to.

Photographers generally have a very loose grip on reality when it comes to what the public want in a photograph. We beat ourselves up on sharpness and technique, and then get it our lack of self-worth reinforced by only talking to each other on forums like this.

The public know what they like, and they generally don't care about technique. Successful business is giving the customer what they want, if they already like what you do then don't make things difficult for yourself by denying them that and insisting on changing what you do to something else.

You're a junior member, so I guess you don't have a mortgage or dependants.. FFS get out there and take some risks whilst you can!

 

[shaylou]

You're a junior member, so I guess you don't have a mortgage or dependants.. FFS get out there and take some risks whilst you can![/quote]

I think the junior part is about how many post you have. It differently has nothing to do with my mortgage, wife in med school and child in private school.

 

[Jayst84]

I always thought it's supposed to be related to your age (restricts kids from the nudes section, and classifieds I think, whilst also letting people know they're talking to a child when offering critique, etc). So, as other people have questioned previously, I have no idea why you are labelled as one, when you're apparently knocking on 50.

 

[Bythesea]

I seem to recall that it is connected to the age you enter when signing up. If you don't put in the full date it defaults to junior - or something like that.

 

[Winkyphoto]

Thanks everyone for some great advice. I am studying the people that were suggested and looking over the site and videos given. This will take a while of course but I'm sure it will be of great help. All the advise has given me some direction and I see now the topics I need to tackle first. I'm going to look into posing much deeper because I think that is one of my main weak points. 99 percent of what I will be doing is shooting out door family portraits. I understand light well enough and adding fill is not a problem. But it is now clear that i do not have a clue about posing. So I went from not knowing where to start to having a clear path on how to become a good portrait photographer thanks to your help.

Thanks a million!!


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Good luck with it. It is great to see someone who acknowledges that there is always something to learn. I think you have a good attitude, and that will take you far.

 

[Winkyphoto]

Jeez, man. I just looked at your Flickr feed. Some really great stuff there. You could easily pull a portfolio of 20 or 30 shots of there that would impress any potential client. Far better stuff than I see on some "professional" photographer commercial sites.

 

[shaylou]

Jeez, man. I just looked at your Flickr feed. Some really great stuff there. You could easily pull a portfolio of 20 or 30 shots of there that would impress any potential client. Far better stuff than I see on some "professional" photographer commercial sites.

Wow thank you very much, that is a great compliment. One of the things that I love about photography is that you can never stop learning if that's what you want to do. My goal is to be very rounded so finding my weak points and overcoming them is very rewarding and tons of fun. It is a blessing to have a forum like this to lean on for help and direction. Again, thanks for the wonderful compliment.

 

[tcfletcher]

For what it's worth Shaylou I'm in total agreement with WinkyPhoto. You have some great shots on Flikr and from a technical point of view you should be confident in your ability. As an example, the photograph of Larry Underwood is great - composition, exposure - you've caught a great moment. I might be wrong - and this may sound pretentious - but all you need is to find your vision and you'll do that by studying others and by doing it. People are asking you to take their portraits so that's a compliment in itself. I can totally understand where you're coming from, but I'd say take the opportunities you're being given - do it for free or just expenses if you feel you have to. Only by doing it will you develop. Go for it.