The Art of Storytelling in Portraiture: From the Studio to the Street

Lotta teaches you how to find the story you want to tell when shooting portraits, whether in studio or out on the street!
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Gear used
- Sony a7R V Mirrorless Camera: bhpho.to/3gmj4cE
- Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM II Lens: bhpho.to/3LBmnHT
- Sony ZV-1 II Digital Camera: bhpho.to/3MxyPdn
0:00 Intro
0:18 In Studio vs. Street
1:05 How to Plan the Unplanned
2:27 Enhance Your Street Portraits
3:03 Advantages of Street Photography
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#PortraitPhotography #StreetPortraits #Storytelling

[@stevewilliamson7264]

I like the connecting, as I always do, connecting seemingly incompatible things. Thanks!

[@jpdj2715]

Nicely done. Yes, it is about "the Decisive Moment" and here I am critical. Referencing Steve McCurry (April 23, 1950) as example is fine, but when we talk about "The Decisive Moment" we must reference the source Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB - August 22, 1908 .. August 3, 2004) who pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.
[wiki: In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book Images à la sauvette, whose English-language edition was titled The Decisive Moment, although the French language title actually translates as "images on the sly" or "hastily taken images", Images à la sauvette included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. The book's cover was drawn by Henri Matisse. For his 4,500-word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from Volume 2 of the Memoirs of 17th century Cardinal de Retz, "Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif" ("There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment"). Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. [...] French title, Images à la Sauvette, loosely translated as "images on the run" or "stolen images." Dick Simon of Simon & Schuster came up with the English title The Decisive Moment. [...] "Photography is not like painting," Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. "There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative", he said. "Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever."]
When HCB's book on this theme was first published, McCurry was about 2 years old.
Were HCB still alive, then I would have asked him if he as art-school educated in the first place, as upper-class man looking down on the less fortunate in their art-opinions, ever had seen the sketches by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). These are like stolen image snapshots of everyday life, drawn in and about the decisive moment. And some of such sketches can have ended up in composited more elaborate etches or paintings.
As photographer, HCB chose a composition with an emptiness and waited for e.g. a human to move into the empty part of the composition.
The idea of stolen or decisive moments was not new in 1952, though. Erich Dr. Salomon (1886..1944 killed in Nazi concentration camp) had pioneered that from 1928 as gentleman paparazzo that had access to high places. Dressing in white tie, Salomon easily blended in and shot handheld in available light with one of the fastest lenses of the time and had to push-develop his films to higher sensitivity. In Salomon's famous 1931 picture, we see 5 gentlemen dressed in white tie, Paul Reynaud, Aristide Briand, Champetier de Ribes, Edouard Herriot, and Léon Bérard, with Briand pointing at the camera and photographer that got found out: "Ah, le voila: le roi des indiscretes!" (look there, the king of indiscrete people!) - Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic. He is mainly remembered for his focus on international issues and reconciliation politics during the interwar period (the Interbellum - between WW1 and WW2).
In the way Rembrandt took Caravaggio's chiaroscuro genre to the next level, where light (chiaro) and dark (oscuro) are concerned, I would argue that photographer Fan Ho (1931..2016) added chiaroscuro to the decisive moment, compared to HCB.

[@carlosquijano2827]

Whole Lotta Love

[@BandH]

Which do you prefer: studio or street portraits?👇💬

[@violin-schwerin]

no preference, as long as the portrait feels genuine

[@bird271828]

Studio photo is good for linkedin. Street photo captures natural scenes.

[@kirkdarling4120]

Studio, which includes locations where I can control the scene.

[@StevenSmith-nq5xe]

Love this. So smart, concise and helpful.

[@bird271828]

Very informative. Thank you Lotta👏👏👏👏

[@CommandFireApparatus]

Street photography is not portraiture. Two totally different genres. Not sure how you can equate the two. You can certainly make portraits on the street, but that is NOT street photography. That is outdoor street portraits. Not sure why this video links the two totally different techniques.