Portraiture
When it comes to portraits in photojournalism, we’re not talking about a stylized fine art portrait or a studio portrait. In news photography, portrait shots usually involve showing people in their usual environment, like a small business owner in his shop, a surgeon in her operating room, or a politician meeting with constituents in their district or on the campaign trail.
Some portraits are posed, and others are candid. Lighting is often impactful, and the setting and details help the reader place the person in the context of their story.
Environmental Portraits
At a glance, what do we know about this person? What sort of story does this image tell? Why do you think the photographer made the decision to photograph him like this? Would another approach have been as effective?
Here are some more environmental portraits.
What are some things we can infer about the person or people being photographed in these images? What are some of the tells? (What they’re wearing? What they’re holding? Their surroundings? The expression on their face?) What do you think might be the tone of the story? (Lighthearted? Serious? Heartbreaking? Inspiring?)
What clues or information does the framing/composition of the image give us? Are we looking up at the subject or looking down? Does that make them seem more imposing, or make them seem vulnerable, or allow for a more interesting composition?
So when you’re thinking about taking portraits of someone for a profile type of story, or as part of a larger, broader story, make sure you’re thinking about when and where you can get the best, most telling shots. Sometimes this involves doing crazy things, like waking up at 4:30 in the morning to meet someone whose job is making bagels. One NYT staff photographer, Todd Heisler, had this to say: “There’s nothing worse than knowing that I want to make photographs about what somebody’s day is like, and I show up and they say, ‘Well, I cleared all my activities for the day so we could spend time together.’ Then, it’s somebody sitting on the couch all day, which is not what I want.”
The NYT did this portrait series featuring all different kinds of essential workers.
Here are the 2023 winners of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) awards for the portrait/personality category and portrait series category.
More advice from Heisler:
Questions to Ask Yourself During the Photo Shoot
- Where specifically might the photographs happen? Once Mr. Heisler gets on location, he said, he thinks about framing, composition, and, most important, lighting. He asks himself: “If it’s a portrait, where would I put them? How does the light hit their face?” And he asks his subjects: “Where are you comfortable? What is meaningful to you?”If possible, you might take some photos in the environment from different perspectives before the subject arrives. Remember, every item matters in an environmental portrait, so move things you don’t want in the shot out of the way. Try also to keep an eye on what’s in the background so that nothing appears to be sticking out of the subject’s head.
- How can I make my subject comfortable? As Mr. Heisler phrased it in our webinar: “Showing up, I’m a stranger, coming into this strange place. You have to get in with people.”Once your subject is in the perfect spot, put your camera down and talk to him or her. What’s the person’s story? Can you find something you have in common to talk about? Then start shooting while you continue to talk to your subject. Take photos when he or she is thinking of an answer to a question, or laughing. You’re trying to get the person to relax and enjoy the process while you capture genuine expressions that feel comfortable, not forced. And, remember, you are in charge. Your subject will be trusting you to tell him or her if something doesn’t look right. Don’t be afraid to ask your subject to move, but don’t touch the person. Show directions by using hand gestures.
- How can I tell the story of this person? Mr. Heisler suggests thinking about this in a variety of ways. “If this is something where I can tell the story in multiple photographs, I’m thinking about details. I’m thinking about, ‘What is a sense of place?’ … And then moving in a little closer, ‘What is the person like?’ And trying to find some expression, or a moment: some action.” (See how Mr. Heisler strikes that balance in the article “A Rock Star’s Next Act: Making Montana a Skateboarding Oasis.” He said he made sure to capture the scenery surrounding the skate park because the location, Montana, was an important part of the story.)
- Consider how you can use the compositional techniques you learned to bring out your subject’s personality. For example, if your subject is a woodworker, maybe you want to have some close-ups of the person’s hands doing their craft. If the person is an important community member, you can make him or her look powerful by shooting with a worm’s eye angle.
- How can I keep my photographs interesting? Take lots of shots and move around, Mr. Heisler suggests. “Try to make a photograph in a way you’re not used to doing it,” he said. “If you’re used to hitting something from a certain angle, get up and try it from the other side and just see how the light plays.”
Discussion: AI in Photojournalism
Adorama has this blog post that delves into the various ways that AI might be incorporated into photography. Some of these relate to improving image quality and are relatively innocuous, like incorporating the technology into cameras to correct for red eye, recognize faces, and focus more quickly on the desired subject. Others, like photorealistic AI-generated images, are a growing, major cause of concern for people in the photojournalism industry.
Many websites (such as deepai.org) offer AI Image Generation. This allows you to create images simply by typing a few words. There are also many apps that allow you to do the same. Usually, you’ll put in a text prompt. The prompt can be as simple as a couple words, or as complex as a paragraph. Sometimes, you’ll even have the option to “exclude” certain things from your image if there is an effect you wish to avoid. These services usually allow you to make a few free images before charging you for additional renditions.
What are some of the potential pitfalls, ethical issues, and consequences of a rise in AI-generated images, specifically when it comes to journalism?
This Columbia Journalism Review article is a Q&A with Fred Ritchin, the dean of the International Center of Photography (ICP).
There is an enormous interest in ChatGPT, in writing essays with artificial intelligence, writing news articles, writing movie scripts, and so on. But there’s very little concern about synthetic AI images and what AI can do to replicate a realistic photo of events and people who never existed. Now you don’t even need a camera. You could just say The war in Ukraine should look like this, and make the image. We really somehow have overlooked this challenge to the photograph as witness. It’s interesting to me: my Vanity Fair piece, which came out ten days ago—as far as I can tell, not one publication linked to it in the world, whereas what I am describing in the essay is enormous. We’re very close to destroying the credibility of the photograph. That’s a major step.
The other thing to add to the puzzle is, if you start making millions of synthetic images, then the new AI will be training on those images as well. The concept of history will become more and more distorted, because they’ll be training on the images that are not made by cameras, but made according to the way people want to see the world. What happens if people have five million images of World War II according to the way they want the war to look, and they look like photographs, so that’s what the AI is going to be training on in the future?
Case study: This photojournalist has created a series of AI-generated images depicting the recent wave of people leaving Cuba by boat. He is selling the images as NFTs and donating 10 percent of the proceeds to charities working with Cuban refugees.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqniSVjrj0h/?hl=en
This series of images set off an avalanche of comments, many of them from other photojournalists who were extremely critical of this project for many reasons.