Posing for Portrait Photography

other nuts and bolts of photography. He was very up-front about

the fact that he was going out on his own after spending a few years

with us. I used to tell him that he knew more than enough about

photography, but he needed to study life. He didn’t understand

what I meant by that.

I told him that you can’t create feeling in a portrait without

being able to possess that feeling yourself. You can’t create a portrait

that reflects love, if you don’t have love in your heart. You can’t deal

with people effectively without understanding people and having

compassion for the human condition. Successful photographers feel

much more than they know!

Let’s face it—a minimum-wage photographer at the mall can

create a road map of a person’s face. They might even be good at

getting the subject to smile. So what makes you worth more than

them? I have seen work by some studios that, quite frankly, would

make me prefer to go to the mall. What sets professional photogra-

phers apart is their professionalism in handling clients and their abil-

THE BUSTLINE AND THE WAISTLINE 75

If you want to set your work apart from the
photographers at the mall, you need to be
able to provide more than just a road map of
the subject’s face.

You can’t deal with people

effectively without understanding

people and having compassion.