In order to fully capture a person, you first have to know them. That is why, with each new client that I come in contact with, I meet with them face to face (usually over dinner or in my home) and learn about their passions, goals and aspirations, and often about the people closest to them who help to make up who they are. I consider myself to be a "lifestyle" photographer rather than a portrait photographer. Lifestyle photographers capture personality and passion in their photos rather than just sitting a person down and telling them how to pose. I start off my sessions by gently posing my clients, and then I step back and let them do the rest, composing my shots to portray them as the beautiful people they are.
I choose to shoot with available light, letting the light come into my lens to create a more natural look. Occasionally I will use flash to fill in my subject while I capture the sunset behind them, but almost one-hundred percent of the time I am letting the camera's sensor capture the light as my eyes see it. Often times I shoot with a fairly "open" aperture, allowing creamy bokeh to fill the backgrounds of my images. The open aperture, the hole in the lens through which light enters, allows me to focus in on my subjects and draw attention to what my eyes are seeing so that observers of my images can easily see what it is that I see when I am composing the shot.
