A tough headshot for me…

[Olaf_ZG]

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Recently I start doing portraits again, and not nothing is easier to ask my colleagues for a portrait. Every one needs one for linkedin.

To get nice portraits from the young ones is easy, they are beautiful. The rest, one needs to put in some more effort to get the beauty out.

we have one guy, physically disabled, visibly in his attitude and face. Not sure why and how, never asked, cause honestly I don’t care. Not because I am indifferent, but we all have our bad and goods, so this I simply take as a given.

But, to make a portrait, then, ofcourse I get critical. See the lesser things, in order to polish them, hide them, as I do with every portrait since I would like to get the best portrait possible.

so, this guy asked me for a portrait, I had to do it, but was probably more nervous as he was. I took about 100 photos, half was either out of focus, or where you could see his misfeatures. But half was nice, bad things covered with shadows, or just things came along. Sometimes he gave me a genuine smile. Like below. Except for d/b no edits.

I am proud of this one, as I know I made him look the best possible.

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[pcgarner]

Very nicely stated. And a grand portrait. Kudos.

[LocalHero1953]

That's great, and I like your context. 

I agree about the right balance right between a true representation, and achieving visual perfection through post processing. In real life, people are moving, and we see their face through the 'lens' of their personality and what we know about them - physical features are blurred or masked by this context. In a single, still, portrait, the viewer knows nothing about the person, and so inevitably concentrates on the physical features, oddities and blemishes. This is the challenge for portrait photographers.

Portrait painters don't have this problem. They can show in a painting all the things they see and understand about their subject over a period of time. A painted portrait is never a snapshot. Our challenge (which you clearly understand) is to make a photographic portrait more than a snapshot, and show what a person is really like (character as well as the looks).

[stuny]

I'm glad you did this and persisted in achieving such fine results.  I assume he likes the photo.

[Olaf_ZG]

10 hours ago, stuny said:

I'm glad you did this and persisted in achieving such fine results.  I assume he likes the photo.

He did, and wanted many others, so I will need to edit some more, which I will show here as well.

[Olaf_ZG]

So, here is another photo I gave him. He is happy with the photos and so am I. We both did our best to get the best out of it. We made a portrait together.

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