With all the Weddings I do I havent done a lot of Portrait work over last few years and its something I'm going to change shortly.
Portraiture was why I started taking photographs in the first place and there was a time many moons ago that this is all I did. Then around 15 years ago I did my first wedding and the portraits became less and less as the weddings became more and more.
I have done a couple of portraits recently and its brought back my hunger to do more. Both customers alowed me to do the portraits any way I pleased, and this is a big thing for me. Many times over the years I've been asked to take pictures of babies on fluffy rugs ect and this is where the work became a strain for me. Thats never been what I have been all about. When left to my own devices I did stunning work of babies, so it was never the fact of the subject but more the specific cheesy requests that came with it. When portraits were my bread and butter work all that time ago I had to take on this kind of work and I started to really hate doing it. Weddings at the time were not my main thing so I would stick to my guns and do them my way. There was no pressure to do anything cheesy at all! Even now the only weddings I do are done with my style and I never follow any specific look that a customer requests. If they look through my portfolio and like what I do, they book me and its as simple as that. This I believe is why I became so successful in my wedding photography and why the portraits fell by the wayside.
I really love doing location work as I've found people are much more relaxed when the situation seems more natural. Its not so much the studio lights ect that makes people uneasy but the plain studio surroundings I think. I can put people at ease quite quickly thanks to being blessed with the personality I have (sounds big headed but its true!!!) but I would rather that they didnt feel uneasy in the first place.
Children definately prefer location photography and it gives the opertunity for some candid stuff as well.
I've just put some of the photo's from my last portrait session below. The great thing is that I followed them pretty much all the time. I wasnt the one sticking them in one place and telling them not to move. They virtually chose their own locations to be photographed.
I really enjoyed this photo shoot and it has definately reminded me of what I used to do early on when just shooting portraits for my portfolio.
