Why great portraits start with connection

As a portrait photographer whose work spans fashion, lifestyle and some of the world’s most recognisable faces, Josh Shinner has spent his career pursuing a genuine moment of connection between subject and lens.

Connection in photography is everything. It’s really as simple as that. Discrepancies in composition, lighting, focus, printing and so on are all forgiven and forgotten in the face of a moment of connection.

It can take many forms in a photograph – the one between sitter and camera (and, subsequently, the viewer), the one between people within the picture, or the one between the photographer and their subject – whether it’s reportage, landscape or even still life. The lack of it is the reason passport pictures are so universally mocked and shared as examples of us looking our most zombie-like and (ironically) very little like our actual selves. There’s just nothing there – no feeling in the eyes, no emotion, no character or personality. Nothing.

Good photography is the absolute antithesis of a passport picture. When someone allows me to take their portrait, the biggest thing I focus on is establishing trust, often in a very small window of time, and creating a space in which they feel comfortable and can relax into being themselves. That foundation and environment gives you the best possible chance of capturing a moment of authenticity, rather than a mask.

A little while ago I was commissioned to take a portrait of Keir Starmer, and I ended up having two minutes to get the picture. We spent a good 90 seconds of that talking about a great pub in north London that we both knew – much to the dismay of various people who thought I was wasting precious time – and then I took a handful of frames in the last 30 seconds and that was that. I think there’s something in the eyes of that portrait (to be fair, I only photographed his eyes) that feels more human than if I’d launched straight into: “Nice to meet you, now stand there and look here.”

Having your picture taken can be daunting and awkward. For some people, myself included, it can feel like a trip to the dentist, so it’s essential for the photographer to be empathetic towards the person in front of the camera – to read the room, the situation and the sitter. Otherwise it can feel more like taking than making. This is why family and friends often capture the best pictures of each other. There’s such trust there that the person in front of the camera is as relaxed and comfortable as they could possibly be – and that leads to authentic moments that reveal something.

I first photographed Florence Pugh in 2018 for a Harper’s Bazaar cover. On those shoots there’s sometimes so much going on – fashion, hair, makeup, sets – that you can lose sight of who the sitter actually is underneath it all. But it felt like we creatively clicked on that shoot, and she was so generous with how much of herself she gave me. In the eight years since, we’ve made a lot of pictures together, and every time she’s in front of my camera now, I feel like I can see more of her true self. There are these wonderful little moments that feel really her, and building relationships like that over the years is incredibly special – and enables more collaborative work.

And it isn’t just important for photographing people. A photographer can connect with and project their feelings on to a landscape or anything they choose. If I were to stand in a field in Somerset next to photojournalist Sir Don McCullin and we both pointed our cameras at the same thing, we’d take wildly different pictures.

For me though, it’s all about the connection with that person who’s allowed you to photograph them. It’s the real joy of the job. In fact, during the pandemic I found myself, like countless other people, frustrated and miserable. It was hard though to pinpoint exactly what it was about that surreal period in our lives that was making me feel like that – mainly as there were so many possibilities! What it turned out to be was that I just missed the buzz and the challenge of needing to quickly build a rapport with someone in order to make a stronger portrait. It was human connection.

In order to banish these blues I started a project (as soon as the authorities deemed it acceptable that is) called Let’s Go For A Walk. I just put an Instagram Story out asking that anyone who wanted to go for a walk and take a couple of pictures together should get in touch. In the subsequent few weeks I walked 115km with 39 people and it was all shot on one 50ft roll of 16mm film. I remember thinking afterwards that if that single roll of film had been lost on its way to the lab, I don’t think I’d have minded (well, easy to say now…) just because the special part of the project was the conversations I had with those people, more than the final pictures. It really focussed my attention on what is not only the most important part of making a picture, but really the essence of what I love about being a photographer.

So there you have it. If, as photographers, we can focus our attention on the people part of portraiture and establish a connection with our subject, we’re going to make infinitely better pictures. Under-exposed? Slightly out of focus? Printed on toilet paper? None of it matters if you’ve captured a real moment.