The Portrait as Fine Art. Learning from painters like Nelson Shanks

By |2017-08-08T15:58:49+02:0009 Jan 2013|

I've come across this beautiful video by world renowned, realist painter and artist, Nelson Shanks. Nelson Shanks created paintings of some of the most important people in the world. I know this is not a painting website, but after all, the definition of photography is "to paint with light". I often teach that we learn to shoot better portraits by looking at the paintings of old and contemporary masters. Through their paintings, they often teach us how to capture light, emotion, drama, mood and atmosphere. As photographers, we should not shy away from finding inspiration by studying the work of other artists and see how we can mimic it by using our cameras creatively.