Adventure into Portrait

I decided I want to expand my environmental portraits. Here is a cross section of previous work. My biggest dilemma right now is stripping off everything I was taught when I was clicking cameras for a local portrait studio. they were all about the cheese factor. Straight poses, and big fake grins, everything that I don't want in my portfolio. So now I am in the process of fighting my previous training and trying to move in the opposite direction. Hopefully I will start to see some usable work come out of it. I'd love to hear your comments about the work, it would help to know which one's are worth keeping, or at least considering it.



This theater picture I took of Kelsey gets a lot of comments. And technically it's pretty sound, but I'm afraid to use it in my portfolio because people will took at my work and think all I can shoot are my friends.



I like these two pictures because composite (bellow) and content (above). You get a good feeling about who this girl is and what she does. but as an image on it's own it's gives of the same hollow tone I got from previous work. I like the way one of my classmates commented. She said "It's cute" and that's all there was to say. I says nothing about me as a photographer other then that I known how to make her look good. As with the bottom, it shows that I know how to make a decent composting and how to use lighting for a dramatic effect. but the viewer really doesn't get much out of the image on it's own. However, there is something about this I really like, and against my best judgment I am tempted not to throw it out quite yet.


I also need to figure where is the line between moment and portrait, the above was a posed image so I count it as a portrait. But you don't know anything about this person so maybe it's not.