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Show family ties

As well as capturing the personality of the subject in a portrait, it is important for a photographer to consider broader themes and the way an image can be used to interpret them. Showing a subject’s relationship to other people can add much significant information to a portrait.

One of the most effective ways to illustrate this theme is to include several generations of one family within one photograph. Doing this not only illustrates the family hierarchy, but also depicts the strong ties that each generation has with the next and the love and trust that binds and protects all the individuals within that family group.

FAMILY

There is a strong sense of family connections in this simple image of a Masai child with two adults. Although we cannot see the adults’ faces, it seems likely that they are the mother and grandmother of the child. The composition is particularly strong because of the connections implied by the triangle formed by the child’s face, the hand on the child’s head and the grandmother’s hand.

Canon EOS-1DS MkII, 28–300mm lens at 260mm, 1/125 sec at f/5.6, ISO 250.