PANDEMIC PORTRAIT - You don't need an extraordinary place to create an amazing portrait
„You don’t need an extraordinary place to create an extraordinary portrait.“
Three square metres. One chair. One small balcony in Vienna. And a portrait I still remember. During the COVID pandemic, I photographed a model in her apartment in Vienna. It wasn’t a studio. It wasn’t a beautiful location. It wasn’t even a particularly comfortable place to photograph. She lived in a tiny shared apartment. The balcony was probably three square metres. There was one chair. A door. The room behind her. That was it. And somehow, that was enough.
01 – The location was almost nothing
When photographers talk about portrait photography, we often talk about locations. Beautiful architecture. Interesting streets. Old buildings. Amazing landscapes. Studios with perfect walls.
We look for places that already look like photographs. But sometimes I think we are looking for the wrong thing. Because the location doesn’t create the photograph. What you see inside the location does. That day, there was almost nothing to work with. The model sat down on the only chair on the balcony, somewhere between the door and the room. I stood outside. And because it was COVID, I was wearing a mask. There was barely any space between us. But when I looked through the camera, I didn’t see a tiny balcony anymore. I saw a portrait.
02 – Three square metres can be enough
This is something I have learned over the last years: You don’t need more space. You need more awareness. A small location can actually force you to see differently. You can’t walk twenty metres backwards. You can’t search for another background. You can’t simply change the entire setup. You have to work with what is there. So you start paying attention. Where is the light? Where does it fall? What happens if she moves ten centimetres? What happens if I move? What disappears when I change my angle? What becomes important when everything else disappears? And suddenly, the limitations become part of the creative process.
03 – The location becomes invisible
The funny thing about a strong portrait is that you often don’t notice where it was taken. You see the person. The expression. The light. The atmosphere. The connection. The photograph creates its own world. And that’s what happened here. Nobody looking at the final portrait would need to know that the photograph was made on a tiny balcony in a shared apartment during a pandemic. The balcony doesn’t matter anymore. It became invisible. And perhaps that’s one of the most interesting things about portrait photography. You can take an ordinary place and make it disappear.
04 – Stop searching for extraordinary places
I think photographers sometimes put too much pressure on themselves to find the perfect location. They travel somewhere beautiful. They search on Instagram. They save locations. They look for the next cool wall, the next abandoned building, the next spectacular landscape. And of course, beautiful locations can help. But they don’t guarantee a beautiful photograph. I’ve photographed in places that looked amazing and produced nothing. And I’ve photographed in places that looked like absolutely nothing and created images I still love. The difference wasn’t the location. It was what I saw.
05 – A location is just a starting point
For me, photography becomes interesting when I stop asking: “Is this a beautiful place? And start asking: “What can I create here?” Those are two completely different questions. The first one makes you dependent on the location. The second one gives you freedom. A wall can become a background. A doorway can become a frame. A shadow can become a studio. A tiny balcony can become an entire world. You don’t have to transform the location physically. You just have to transform the way you look at it.
06 – Constraints can make you more creative
There is another reason I like this kind of photography. When you have everything available, it’s easy to keep changing things. Different light. Different lens. Different location. Different setup. More equipment. More possibilities. But when you have almost nothing, you have to make decisions. One chair. One person. One small space. One camera. And suddenly the question becomes much simpler: Can I make something meaningful with what I have? I like that. Because photography doesn’t always need more. Sometimes it needs less.
07 – Extraordinary doesn’t mean complicated
We often associate an extraordinary photograph with a complicated production. Big location. Big team. Big lighting setup. Big concept. But an extraordinary photograph can also be incredibly simple. A person. A moment. A little light. And someone who is paying attention. That’s enough. The photograph doesn’t know how much money you spent on the location. It doesn’t know how expensive your equipment was. It doesn’t care how impressive the place looked before you arrived. It only shows what you decided was worth seeing.
08 – Look again
So the next time you arrive somewhere and think: “There’s nothing here.”
Stay for another minute. Look again. Turn around. Look at the wall. Look at the window. Look at the shadow. Look at the person. Move two metres. Then move back. Maybe the location isn’t the problem. Maybe you simply haven’t seen it yet. That tiny balcony in Vienna taught me something I still carry with me: „You don’t need an extraordinary location to create an extraordinary portrait.“ You need to see the possibility inside an ordinary one.
09- CREATE
A photograph doesn’t begin with a perfect location. It begins with attention. Sometimes you have a studio. Sometimes you have a beautiful landscape. And sometimes you have three square metres, one chair and a person sitting between a door and a room. That’s enough.
SEE LIGHT.
DIRECT PEOPLE.
CREATE.
And turn the ordinary into something people remember.
