Portrait Tips

All photos by Mark Garten

As a third-generation shutterbug in his family, Mark Garten found his passion for photography in high gear by the early age of seven: "My father and grandfather were pharmacists by trade, but both were camera buffs."

In college, he attended the University of Michigan, where he started out as an engineering...

All photos by Lotte Jacobi

Lotte Jacobi was renowned not only for her portraits of influential people, but equally, for her gift of revealing her subjects' inner being. She always insisted that her style was "the style of the person I'm photographing."...

People are among the most popular photo subjects. This month's lesson presents some easy ways to produce better people shots.

1. Don't Just Sit There...
Static portraits—with the subject just slouched there, or stiffly posed, are not terribly appealing. It generally pays to play director as well as photographer when you're photographing people.

A successful commercial/editorial photographer in Orlando, Florida, Eric Dusenbery says he was greatly influenced by his father when honoring World War II veterans in his book, Veteran Voices. According to Dusenbery, he grew up listening to his father's WWII experiences in the South Pacific. "He was in New Guinea, the Philippines, and eventually went to Japan for a...

As with an environmental portrait, you can capture revealing images of people by photographing them at work. The idea is to not only portray the individual, but to show what a person does with his/her life. Most occupations have distinctive tools, clothing, or settings that can be interesting to photograph. Some people who would...

All photos by Meg Smith

Meg Smith's wedding photography goes beyond the typically posed portraits--she has a gift for capturing special, intimate moments throughout the event, resulting in some very memorable images. Her attitude, which translates to her images is, "Weddings are fun--they're celebrations!" During the eight years...

Several years ago, singer Paula Cole posed the musical question, "Where have all the cowboys gone?" Apparently, photographer Kendall Nelson has the answer. In her book, Gathering Remnants: A Tribute to the Working Cowboy, Nelson delivers a starkly beautiful pictorial essay on the lives of cowboys who live on working ranches in the American west. For about three and a...