My black and white portraits are lacking emotion and i was wondering if any of you had any ideas on how to get the emotion in the photo. I mean I have one light source on the subject but there just is not enough emotion there. I really need some suggestions. Have any of you been successful at getting emotion in your portraits, if any of you have don this sort of thing. I also need to new techniques that i could try with Black and White because I am trying some photo techniques out on my own.Thank you

-- Liz Spafford (dustystar75@hotmail.com), October 17, 2002

Answers

evoking emotion in portraits ...

Liz, I work as a news photographer and a part of my job is to produce interesting portraits of folks all the time ... it is a real challenge to give the photo a freshness on a daily basis .... don't beat yourself up over not having "emotion" in your photos if the subject isn't emoting ... if thats the case, use your single light source creatively to add a sense of drama to your image ... ie. shoot a portrait with a wide angle, your subject stands against a wall, you set your light high and left of camera to cast a long shadow across the wall .... this adds drama and that can translate into emotion ... I shot an illustration for the paper for a story on battered children and I used one light almost directly over the childs head, completely elliminating detail in his eyes (deep dark shadows) ... it was the light that added drama, making the viewer realize this wasn't a "pretty subject". Use your light creatively ... look at what the news photographers are doing ... its a good, cheap source for a photo education ... later. bill

-- Bill Kennedy (artguy313@aol.com), November 03, 2002.