I’ve been realizing that some of the portrait work that made me happiest (self and otherwise) was taken in the basement of my former house, which I could make completely dark except for the lighting I chose (flash and otherwise). I learned a lot about light from those experiments. I don’t really have a space in the current house that gives me that affordance (the basement here isn’t a finished basement, and it’s not a nice space to spend time in working on photos as a result).
Anyway, this was a silly photo that our good old boy put up with and I think I managed an expression that brought it home.
The other silly photo from around the same time (about six months later, as you can see from the reacquired beard) in roughly the same set of experiments that worked was because of the props (well, and the match of my name to a certain Monty Python character’s name…)
I used to see the work of a portraitist on a site where lots of photographers posted images that I really liked—she made portraits where the subjects wore faux-military or old aristocratic clothing, with a kind of sepia-brown backdrop, and shot (I think) with a medium telephoto lens to get a flatter look. The thing that really made them was the prop clothing, and that made me realize that a lot of interesting artistic portraiture depends on being able to make a set or dress a subject. (Food photography too.) Another barrier, really, though I think scouting for interesting locations that are accessible can overcome it.
Tim! Couldn’t resist. Two of my favorite pictures, actually.