Mastering portraiture involves more than knowing what lens to use to ensure your photos don’t suffer from bad perspective distortion. It is not enough for you to understand where to place your headlights to create dramatic light. As portrait photographer Mark Mann explains in this excellent video, it’s important that you make a personal connection with your subject.
Mark Mann explains that he loves faces and enjoys studying faces. It’s socially awkward to stare at someone in public and study the relationship between their eyes, mouth, and cheeks, but once we hold the camera between ourselves and the subject, we We can view and even study facial features. It was his love of faces and photography that led Mark to become a portrait photographer. Portrait drawing is more than simply studying faces. It is also not a matter of understanding light. For Mark, communication skills are perhaps the most important element to use in a portrait session.
I met Mark briefly at a Leica-sponsored event a few years ago where he was doing on-site portraits. The image he creates of me is one of my favorite images of myself. In the video, Mark recounts the story of being photographed and observes the photographer focusing his full attention on the light, camera and f-stop. Mark was ignored by the photographer because it took the photographer time to adjust all the different tools on set. Then the photographer pointed the camera at Mark and started taking pictures.
“They might be making a pretty picture. They can make a creative photo with light… but they get nothing (from) me. And to me, that’s not what portraiture is about,” he said. As photographers, we are usually only given a short amount of time to our subjects. “Make it big. Talk to them. Be a human. Try to break it down into two interacting human beings. If you can break it down to that extent, you can get started. get more power from his portraits,” he said.Check out the video for more details.
