Portraits For Websites

Portraits For Websites

by William Lulow

I have written before about how to go about photographing people for various corporate websites. I have also mentioned many times that these images really need to fit in with existing portraits on the site. If you are making portraits for a new website or you are called in to consult about how they should look, then you are free to set it up the way you would like. But most of the time, I am asked to make images that would fit in to an existing design.

With that said, I recently completed a job where I was given samples of the images the company already had and was asked to conform to it. Here are the examples:

They were very specific as to the fact that the portraits had to be horizontal, how much they had to show, jacket/no jacket, etc. Here were my shots:

As you can see, they match pretty well. There are things you need to observe when you do jobs like this. Backgrounds have to be similar, image size has to be the same as well as the overall lighting. These images were all shot with three lights, two lighting the background and one, big main light (as per instructions) lighting the people. These were all consistent both with what was needed and how they were shot. They all look the same and they will fit in closely with existing shots.

If I were just left to my own instincts and ideas, they probably would have looked more like these:

When doing headshots or portraits, I always like to have a darker background because it makes the image stand out a bit more. In addition, the addition of accent lights or highlights stand out better against a darker background. Also, I have always thought that portraits are basically vertical images rather than horizontal ones, but for many websites horizontal ones seem to fit better. They are more in an aspect ratio similar to television images. They may also fit in with other website designs as well.

I have also written before about the differences between headshots and portraits. The former are more informational images that people use to show what they look like, but hopefully, in a way that shows them in the best light. Portraits, on the other hand, are more how a photographer sees his or her subjects. A truly effective portrait is often conceived by the photographer and executed with a plan in mind. You know this because many photographers have made portraits of the same famous people, yet each image is different in one or more major ways. Photographers develop their own favorite styles of how they like to light a subject and how they like to photograph them as well. And that’s what differentiates a truly individual portrait from a normal headshot. My assignment above was really just to create good likenesses in a particular, prescribed way. As a professional, I am called on to do this on a regular basis. True, individual portraits, on the other hand really can be anything the photographer wants. And, the more individual and creative, the better. There was a famous portrait of Bill Cosby, in his heyday, made by Life Magazine photographer, John Loengard, that showed the comedian in silhouette, from the side, holding a big cigar. You knew immediately that it was Cosby without ever seeing any of his features. It was a successful portrait because it immediately captured the essence of the subject.

That’s what we should be looking for – a definitive representation of our subjects, famous or not, that tries to say who they are at that point in time and space. It should also be visually interesting and hold the viewer’s attention, something that can be achieved by lighting, pose, expression or a combination of these.