Facial Analysis in Fine Portraiture- Corrective Techniques

[Ed Shapiro]

Thanks Jeff and Aaron! Feedback is so important- it helps me write more and better articles.

Jeff- if you have a body of work that your family members are not pleased with, you have a great means of experimentation at your disposal. Even if you can get a few of the to sit for you again, you can apply some of your newly learned methods and see if you can spot the problems and fix them. You never know- some people have a blown-up image of themselves and are sadly surprised if the don't look like movie stars in you images.

In professional and traditional portraiture, it is our job, however, to bring out the "star quality" in each of our subjects to the best of our abilities. After you have made a few new images, perhaps you could post the before and after shots.

If we can pull off some of this kind of participation, we can convert this little tutorial into an on-line Camel workshop where we can all learn by our successes and mistakes.

Thanks again guys- you have made my day! Ed

[patterfr]

Ed
More awesomeness from you.
Thank you greatly.

[popawalker]

Once again another excelent tutorial by Ed, good job Ed. The detail contained in this one is very helpful.
Steve

[felix.reichardt]

Great article Ed!

[TexasJeff]

Thanks Ed,
You are right and I will do many reshoots using your guide and I will post some stuff in the not too distant future to my Gallery. In fairness to myself, the "portraits" were not really portrait at all but were shot to fufill the requirements for a class assignment. I delivered what the instructor wanted but not what a client would want, if that makes sense. That said I still don't know much about portraiture and learned a huge amount from that assignment and the study I did after I got my familys feedback.
TJ

[cryokid]

Thank you very much for sharing your experience and knowledge with us.

[mur_phy]

not sure about 55 years ago, but certainly close to that time many photographers and probably those that Ed has been around have provided many seminars and even books related to Portraiture. Still available on the internet is the book created by Joe Zeltsman
http://jzportraits.home.att.net/ . Others that presented many seminars of value included Al Gilbert, Monte Zucker (the best known student of Joe's), Don Blair for families, David Ziser who currently has a great instructional blog and many others including Hugh Jacob.

The '70's and '80's were a terrific time to learn as it was a time of many seminars both large and small. Having now been retired for 10 years I'm not totally familiar with what is going on in the photography seminar field but I'd assume PPOC, PPA and WPPI offer lots of information and now with the internet, folks like Ed and others can offer photographers even more info.

Discussion groups such as this one and DPReview offer visual opportunities for photographers to post images and have them discussed, critiqued and adjusted which opens a whole new vista for learning.

Check out the link to Joe Zeltsman to learn about lighting, posing, facial views etc.

another good site for instruction but it is not cheap is PortraNET.com - Learning posing and lighting Online, professional fine portraiture instruction by Ron Kramer

Ron's main site is House of Photography studio and gallery: senior pictures, senior portraits family children baby and wedding photography

I was a bit surprised to see that Ron is now doing some wedding photography. He had dropped it a few years (well quite a few) ago but I'm wondering if a student is actually doing the weddings as I notice somethings that I did not expect him to do such as incorrect facial views, bridal gowns splayed out in front of the bride and a few others. However he is a brilliant photographer and instructor.

[0ldsch00ld0g]

Mr Shapiro Thanks you so much for the time you put into helping the new people with your wealth of experience. Very much appreciated.

[kyzer]

Mr Shapiro, thank you for the wealth of the information...on portraiture

[johnquist]

Oh great and wise one.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

My mother thanks you.
My father thanks you.
My friends thank you.
My family thanks you.
And I thank you.


Thank you, thank you very much....