You may disagree with me on this but if you do please do so with some objective fact. Not subjective opinion. Portraits are the foundation of all photographic practice. There I have said it. Why? Not just because a successful portrait requires a myriad of transferable photographic skills including an understanding of composition, the impact of controlling light and a relationship with the camera which is deep enough to work with it through muscle memory rather than technical anxiety. But because it requires soft skills that should inform any successful photography practice and life outside the medium.

The issue for many photographers is that it is precisely these soft skills that prevent them from either engaging with the portrait or leads them to seeing it as nothing more than a technical exercise.

Anxiety is at the base of this struggle with undertaking a portrait. The fear of rejection, the requirement for social interaction, the need to control a situation. Issues that are increasingly prevalent in our society today. The successful portrait photographer needs to overcome these issues and accept that without doing so they will be transferring their anxiety through their photography with a resulting uncomfortable interaction.

I have written and spoken previously about the difference between photographic observation (street photography, landscape, nature, wildlife, architecture, sports, still life etc etc) and the photography of interaction which portrait photography requires so I will not revisit that now. However, I think this is the main challenge for photographers making portraits that need to control a situation. The successful portrait requires the photographer to make decisions and implement them. To communicate them with clarity and confidence. To step over an invisible line that society places between us.

When teaching photography I begin with the portrait. I stress the importance of connection and eye contact. The importance of communication and empathy. Then the awareness of light and composition. In short in my opinion the foundation stones of photography. To avoid the portrait is to avoid that essential foundation. I hear photographers say that they don’t like making portraits, that they are not interested in portrait photography and the more honest that they find it too difficult. That they prefer landscape, wildlife, still life or street photography. All valid areas of the medium but all that allow the photographer to be an observer rather than an instigator. Whatever the excuse may be for not at least experimenting with the portrait it remains an excuse. Like taking medicine when we are ill, visiting the dentist and getting a yearly health check, portrait photography is essential to a healthy photographic life even if you don’t like the idea or the process.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

Scott’s book  Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.

©Grant Scott 2025