The Art of Minimalist Portrait Photography

“Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication” - Steve Jobs

Removing, simplifying, detracting. I am sure I fail miserably quite often but what I’m always striving for simplicity in my portraits.

A Movement Toward Simplicity

I want as little as possible to detract from the person or people I am photographing. Possibly I’m attracted to the simplicity of being because I am by default something of a messer. I’m the kind of person who loves the idea of a clean house tidy mind whilst at the same time turning the kitchen into a bombsite when boiling an egg.

My photographs are always a movement toward simplicity. An intention. Less is more. There is confidence in photographs that attain this simplicity especially portraits. There is a tendency, especially with beginners to complicate things. There will often be a lot to distract in an image.

Often, in a set of images, there will be 20-30 images set against a dozen or so backdrops. There is natural insecurity when we’re starting out and an unconscious need t to cover a multitude of sins by distracting the viewer. Hence, we pebble the image with a mass of distraction.

Getting Outside of our Heads

There is of course nothing wrong with a tapestry of content in a frame. An image awash with color and movement and a lot going on can be just as attractive and can be just as challenging to pull off, but more complex images that work tend to have a real purpose and message to them.

Some street photographs or documentary images that tell a story would possibly have a more going on in the frame but even these images, or at least the best of them, have very little in the image that shouldn’t be there. In the end, simplicity to me is everything I aspire to creatively. There is me. There is the subject. There is a source of light. Everything else is a distraction.

The challenge to overcome when you are shooting simple portraits is the idea that you will soon run out of ideas. This happens when we are locked in our minds thinking about stuff. As soon as we begin to talk to ourselves in our heads that ‘what am I going to do now’ we are not ‘seeing’ what is in front of us.

We can only ever be bored when we are thinking we are bored. We can never be bored when we are present to reality because the universe is constantly in flux. So what we need to begin to do is to practice getting out of our heads and into the moment.

Embrace Discomfort

Another challenge is feeling stuck and as a consequence, we feel a degree of discomfort inside. It is then we get into a fight or flight way of operating and it’s then we might make the decision to move our subject to a new location hoping that this will shake us up and a few ideas will topple from the heavens.

My invitation to people who participate in my workshop is to be with that feeling of discomfort and not to allow it to dominate how you shoot creatively. There is absolutely zero wrong with moving between a few locations and backdrops. Absolutely not, and it shouldn’t be as a consequence of fear. Use your fear and discomfort as a way of anchoring your creative intention.

This is what is meant by being fearless. Being fearless isn’t the absence of fear. On the contrary, it’s about being able to operate when fear is operating inside of you. The thing is. You may get a whole bunch of likes posting an image with fireworks and glossy post production in much the same was as Xfactor music might outsell a new Nick Cave album.

But is it as artistic and does it have spirit? I say not. You need to choose what is important for you. Gloss and Glamour or artistic integrity.

The Mind Wants Complexity

The mind loves complexity. It’s scared of simplicity because then it has nothing to do. So it is always looking to add more. It creates confusion and complexity to keep itself busy. This is why when we tidy our car or our home we feel a sense of spaciousness in our minds. If you are, like me, someone who is forever adding confusion and clutter to the mix then it takes a practice, a kind of swimming against the tide, to return to a more simple way of seeing and being. I hope some of this makes sense. I’d love to hear your thoughts below.

The images I have chosen below are for me simple in their composition. Some are against a clean backdrop. Some are not. But for me there is little if anything in the shot that detracts from the subject.