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Rangefinder
Magazine Elements of Style, Senior Style by Jeff Smith A client comes to a photographer to have a portrait taken. She sees the proofs, she gets excited and she places her order. The order comes in, the clients picks it up and hangs her wall portrait proudly on the walls of her home. A month goes by and she changes where the portrait is hanging, because it just doesn’t look right. She tries many locations around the house and it still doesn’t look as it should. At this time, she realizes that her prize portrait isn’t such a prize after all. She notices flaws in the poses and/or people in the portrait. The background or scene that she hardly noticed now doesn’t seem to go with the people in the portrait. This client wonders why she made such a stupid mistake. Photographers do the same thing. They see the proofs from a test session and they get excited. They order a sample for their studio. When it comes back from the lab, they aren’t as excited. They start to notice things they didn’t notice when they first saw the image.
I start with clothing, because every-thing must be coordinated to a client’s clothing. While you have a multitude of options for every other aspect of the image, you will always be limited by the clothing your client brings in. This is why we suggest that our clients bring a huge variety of clothing. Most scenes, poses and types of lighting have a style or overall feeling they produce when you look at them. This style must be selected to fit the same style that is set by the clothing.
Achieving a portrait that has a sense of style requires the photographer to think about every detail in the composition. This goes beyond noticing white socks and fixing wrinkles. The hard part for many photographers is noticing what feelings a scene, a certain type of lighting or a certain pose produce. Many photographers think, much more than they feel, which is why so many photographs are produced that have perfect lighting, but visually don’t make sense. There is no thought given to coordination or style.
Trendy or fashionable clothing should be coordinated to fashionable posing. To get ideas for this type of posing look through any of the fashion or glamour magazines. Victoria’s Secrets catalog is another source for great fashion posing.
While posing generally reflects the same feeling set by the clothing, many portraits mix styles to create a specific feeling. Take a woman in an elegant dress or bride and have her lay down with barefeet and the look that is achieved is more playful. You are in control and can produce any look your client desires; you just have to be aware of the overall feeling that is produced.
Many photographers tend to categorize style in terms of “Feminine” or “Masculine.” These categories worked when women wanted to appear passive and men wanted to look power-ful. I prefer to think of style in terms of “power” or “playful.” If you haven’t noticed things have changed. Woman aren’t passive people that predominantly “tend to their man and home.” Whether it is your wife or mother, women most definitely aren’t passive any more! Men have also changed. It is proper for a man to relax and smile without worrying about his masculinity. This translates into style being determined by the expectation of the client, not the gender.
Most photographers have the ability to control every aspect in the portraits they produce, if they want to. As professional photographers, we can produce portraiture that is tailored to the expectations of the client and the portrait’s intended use. All we have to do is be aware of what we are creating and what each element in a portrait is visually saying. When all the elements come together, you create a portrait, which visually makes perfect sense. A portrait that is created this way may become dated, but it will never age. Jeff Smith owns and operates Jeff Smith’s Photoique in Fresno, California. The studio now has its own web site, which features articles by Smith and other information: www.jeffsmithphoto.com/
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Wines and cheese often become better with age, unfortunately
many portraits don’t. This typically happens when the elements
in a photograph don’t come together to visually “make sense.” For
a photograph to visually make sense, or have a sense of style that doesn’t “age,” each
aspect of the portrait must coordinate with all the others to produce
an overall sense of style. This sense of style is achieved when the clothing
a client is wearing is coordinated to the pose, scene/background and
lighting, as well as the predominant lines and textures of the portrait.
All of these things are selected to achieve an overall look that’s
appropriate for the intended use of the image.
In this outdoor
scene (above right), the feeling produced by the scene is elegant. The
first outfit the young lady wanted to wear didn’t
coordinate with the overall scene. We suggested she change into the more
elegant clothing. A portrait that had a definite sense of style was achieved.
The young lady’s flowing hair, her trendy blouse and a perfect
pose all came together to produce a striking portrait. While the clothing
and hairstyles may change, while the person in the portrait may age,
the appeal of the portrait never will. 
To avoid writing another book here, we are going to
look at three of the most important elements of style. Clothing. You
don’t
have to be a member of the fashion police to understand the basics of
clothing.
Jeans, shorts, summer dresses and tops fall the into the “casual” category.
Leather and jean jackets, fashionable blouses and shirts, as well as
dresses that the average young lady would wear out “clubbing” would
be con-sidered “trendy/fashionable.” Suits, tuxes, elegant
dresses would be con-sidered “elegant.” Pretty easy stuff.
Posing. Coordinating posing to the above clothing is just a matter of
using common sense. Casual poses go with casual clothing. Casual poses
are “rest” poses. The arms rest on the ground or knees, the
body lays back or leans forward. The best place to get ideas for casual
posing is by watching people while they are relaxing. Look at how people
pose as they are reading a book, watching TV or lying on the sofa. These
are the best ways to pose your clients, because this is the real way
people arrange their bodies.
Background/Scene. The area around your
client, in the foreground and background make up the scene. To determine
the feeling a scene produces
look at the predominant lines and textures. This works whether you work
outdoors or in the studio with only painted backgrounds. Lines and textures
visually translate into feelings. 
Determining the look
or feeling of a scene or background isn’t
complicated. You simply look at the predominant lines and textures in
the scene. Straight lines and harder textures would reflect what used
to be called a masculine feeling, but we will call it a feeling of power.
Curved lines and softer textures produce a feeling that is playful (or
more feminine, if you will). At times a scene doesn’t work with
the feeling you are trying to produce, so change it. Textures can be
made softer by opening up the lens aperture of your lens, diminishing
depth of field. Straight lines can become diagonal lines, achieving a
different dynamic by tilting your camera. 