The Details Of Portraiture

Photographers, in essence, are storytellers. Instead of words, we use images to tell our stories. In traditional portraiture, we most often focus on the face of our subject to narrate the shot. We look to capture just the right curve of the mouth, the twinkle in the eye or the tilt of the head and rely on facial expressions to reveal the heart and soul of the person in front of our lens. There’s so much more to telling the whole story than that.

In our new book, Expressive Photography: A Shutter Sisters’ Guide to Shooting from the Heart, we introduce another approach to portraiture: focusing on the details. Although often overlooked, the small gestures and subtle nuances of your subject often can tell you more about them than any headshot ever could. Co-author Andrea Scher adds, “A subject’s spirit can live in the tiniest details—that perfect brooch, the gesture of her hands, the tiniest rose peeking out of a pocket. As photographers, we get to notice it all. As seers and story-framers, we get to make these powerful choices: What story do we want to tell? Where do we want the viewer to look? What do we want them to notice?”