Move Over Titian, Move Over Rembrandt — Mama’s Making Portraits

I have a couple of tricks that I feel pretty strongly about when it comes to photography — well, more accurately, portraits.  I’m sure I can’t really take credit for them.  They’re probably lesson #1 in every portraiture class around the country.  But I still think they’re pretty crucial cardinal rules.

Rule #1 – Get in as close as you possibly can.  Seriously.  ”In your face.”  That’s my motto.  In addition to the obvious, it forces the person you’re photographing to relax a bit, or at the very least engage with you, which makes for a much better portrait.

Rule #2 – Shoot of as many frames as you can as quickly as you can.  Just keep firing away.  None of this one, two, three, smile baloney.  With rare exceptions among phenomenally gifted portrait photographers, natural expressions make for nicer photographs than posed ones.  If you fire off 30 frames within a couple of minutes, you are bound to capture something good in there.  And that’s all you need — one good frame.

So then you’ve got this great portrait of your boyfriend, wife, mother, child … what do you do with it?  I have to admit, I stole this idea from a friend of mine – the credit for this one goes to Emily Miles Terry, excellent idea Em! – but it’s a really good one, so I copied it and I think probably everyone else should too.  You kill all kinds of birds with one stone –hang original artwork in your house, get art on the cheap, add a personal touch to your decor, get to stare at the gorgeous faces of the ones you love, impress your friends (I’m sure there are more I’m not thinking of right now).  Blow up the portraits to a huge scale — I’d say pretty much as big as the file size of the photo will allow, and with cameras these days, that can be really big!  Don’t entirely pay attention when kodakgallery.com or snapfish.com or whomever you’re using (I find kodakgallery.com does a good job with enlargements) says that you’ve gone too big.  I’d go maybe one size beyond their recommended limit for your image.  Generally I find you still get a great looking picture.  Frame the portrait with a mat and a professional frame.  Obviously you can do it however you like, but I find that an ornate traditional looking frame works well.  The combination of the frame and a very modern style of photography makes for a nice juxtaposition and gives a feeling of an updated version of a painted portrait.

Please, do not be seduced by the notion that every photograph suddenly becomes a work of art once it is blown up real big.  Not all photographs merit being blown up, and blowing them up does not suddenly make them any good.  But I do think that enlarging a close-up portrait is a pretty good rule of thumb and works an enormous percentage of the time.

(Oh, and one more small suggestion from personal experience, and I say this not as a photographer but as the subject of a photograph, make sure the person in the photograph actually likes the photograph of himself.  Just a thought.)

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