fstopinertia – photography of angela marklew

I have to say that for me, photographing two people is probably the most daunting thing to do.  Now, I’m not saying that shooting one person is a walk in the park, because there are always challenges with every shoot but think about it…shooting a single person, you only have to worry about the light falling on one person, the emotion coming from one person, and the placement in the frame of one person – your focus is solely on that one person.  The greatest challenge (and this is with any portrait) is creating an image that draws the viewer in.

Shooting a group of people (3 or more) is fun in that you can play around with breaking the group up into smaller sub-groups (my preference is to always have odd-numbered groups of people).  Groups can be more challenging in terms of lighting, but by your arrangement of people, you can always create a dynamic, visually compelling image.  Now we get into shooting the double portrait…the reason this is the most challenging for me is two-fold.  First, you can’t really break up your subjects into smaller groups of odd numbers because (and here is reason number two) shooting a double portrait is about shooting the relationship between two people.  In shooting a double portrait you have to create a visually compelling image that draws the viewer in and makes them understand the relationship.

When shooting a portrait, no matter how many people are involved, I feel it’s important to not only make the portrait informational, but emotional as well.  As Paul Strand once said, “it is one thing to photograph people.  It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their human-ness.”