Anyone can take a portrait photograph, regardless of experience or training due to the often overwhelming advancements in digital photography and the many tools and accessories that come today’s digital cameras. Simply point and shoot, it’s really that easy. Not so long ago, if someone needed a photographic portrait, there were many more time and money intensive steps that one needed to take to create one. The rapid evolution of digital technology has made those steps obsolete and made portrait photography virtually painless.

While there are many different kinds of photography, portrait photography describes the process of capturing the image of a person or group of people, while generally focusing on their face and expressions. This is a key distinction, even though many portraits include the rest of the body and background images. The focus, however, is always on the subject’s face and facial expressions. There are many different kinds of portrait shots, too. A candid shot, one where the subject is not posed and often taken while they are not paying attention, is very different than a body shot which is very deliberately posed to instill a particular emotion or reaction from the photo. Portraits always have a specific point of view, and the photographer uses body language, the position of the gaze and various poses and backgrounds to bring their internal vision of the shot to life.

Portrait photography has been around nearly as long as photography itself. Even so, it was only a treat for the very rich, as it was a very expensive luxury to procure. Before photography, painters and artists spent huge amounts of time, carefully creating portraits of their affluent clients using oil paint, water colors, charcoal and even marble and other types of stone in sculptures. You might be able imagine how much time and thought went into these masterpieces. Even with the amount of time that went into completing early portraits, the artists were experts and while not easy, they produced their masterpieces in a reasonable amount of time.

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