Light and composition are certainly essential for a great portrait. However, what is often overlooked is the imperative for rapport with a person. Person. Not subject. Without a personal connection, portraits will trend toward uneasiness, lack of eye contact and strained expressions. Unless it's intentional, you'll feel it, the person being photographed will feel it and the image just won't work. When you take a picture of a stranger, you have a human responsibility to respect that person. This is probably why the best photojournalists understand the need to exercise caution and develop rapport before clicking the shutter.
I have relatively few portraits that I'm pleased with. However, of those that are good, I spent a LOT of time with the individual being photographed. I hung out for a solid hour with a homeless man under a Sao Paulo viaduct. Six rolls of T-Max 100 and one shot works. When looking at the negatives, there is a tangible feeling of tension at the beginning of the conversation and scrolling through, his expression changes and becomes completely relaxed into a hapless state, looking directly through the lens, mirror and into my mind's eye.
In our hurried and harried society, most people feel like they don't have the time (even on vacation!) to slow down and, at the very least, ask a someone their name. The image below was recently made while my family and I were on a spectacular road trip through Nova Scotia. We camped on a hill (Whale Cove Campground, Long Island) and before moving on, drove to Whale Cove Harbor where I met "Kemp." I hung out with him for about 45 minutes. Kemp's ancestors had lived in the same house, about a minute from where this picture was taken, for over 120 years. He is a line fisherman by trade and bought what used to be a derelict boat hull in 1998. Two years later, it was seaworthy and he waxed poetic about how the older hulls of lobster boats were far superior in the water in terms of speed and stability than newer models. "You can push anything through the water if you put a big enough engine in it. No one makes a good riding hull anymore."
Kemp continued to lament how the Bay of Fundy was being destroyed by drag fishing. I had known that draggers rip up the sea floor but what I didn't know, according to him, was that for every one pound of fish sold by draggers, 1200 pounds of sea life are destroyed. By comparison, for every one pound of fish sold by line fishermen, approximately two pounds of sea life are discarded. What is more, companies that employ draggers lobby politicians to vote against sea life preservation efforts at the expense of severe and irreversible destruction of the Bay and habitat for untold hundreds of marine species. "Many tourists that come up here chant 'Save the whales!' But what they should be saying is 'Save the Haddock!' Marine scientists concluded that many of the Minke and Humpbacks that frequent the Bay in summer months to feed were suffering from disease and parasites and therefore had nothing to do with bottom dragging. However, with the overfishing of haddock and destruction of plankton habitat on the Bay floor, whales are severely malnourished and their immune systems suffer, succumbing to what would otherwise be harmless."
And to think I just stopped by to say hi.
The bottom line - Say hello. Introduce yourself and ask a few questions before asking to photograph someone you're interested in. Better still, whether your in the studio or outside, put the camera down occasionally and talk. Show interest instead of the click-and-dash method. You will find that both you and the person you're photographing will enjoy good company. And it'll show in your pictures.
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