Urban Portraits: Endless Possibilities

Integrating your hometown into your shoot is a great way to establish a deeper meaning in your pictures. If not hometown, perhaps there’s another city that holds a special place in your life. The fact is that urban settings offer endless possibilities for interesting and memorable pictures. It’s a matter of choosing locations with which you connect in a personal way.

What Are Urban Portraits?

Urban portraits are pictures in which you are the main subject within the setting of a town or city. If the Golden Gate Bridge has special meaning to you, for example, the structure would show for context but you would be the primary figure in the picture. But not all pictures have to show a celebrated landmark. Many other settings can be used for aesthetics and compositional purposes in order to accentuate you are the subject of your pictures.

Indeed, urban locations offer endless possibilities as far as lighting, colors, textures, designs, architecture and all can be used in support of your wardrobe, style of posing and overall story that you wish to tell through your pictures.

I love exploring locations before your session as well as discovering interesting spots during the shoot. Below, I’ve included five locations throughout California where I’ve photographed models and clients.

Examples of Urban Portraits

FRESNO: The City Lights

Evening shoots offer a special feature for your urban portraits: lights! Red, gold and green are common hues about town. When used as part of your color harmony, you come away with exciting pictures.

This photo is right on Fulton Street, and just outside of my previous studio. Sandra worked in the building on the top right edge of the picture.

The colors of the street lights compliment Sandra’s dress. Her pose is wonderful. The bluish evening sky creates a nice background for her head, accentuating her facial features. I had her pose between reflectors on the street as a way to further integrate the foreground with the yellow in the background.

On a side note, when posing on the street, it’s important to have at least one assistant to monitor traffic. I had two during this shoot. On another shoot, a police officer watched over. So, there are ways to shoot safely on the street. The return is that you come away with interesting pictures.

MADERA: Complimentary Colors

Kaylee had just moved to Madera and thought this shoot would be a creative way to connect herself with her new town.

Because this blue dress was one of two Kaylee was to wear, I chose this spot for its overall yellow hue. I think of the light green steps as the accent color and in any case, green is created by blue and yellow.

Yellow and blue is a common complimentary harmony used film from which photography developed color grading. Complimentary color schemes can be created pretty much everywhere in cities. Walls, lights, and even plants can be used in juxtaposition with your wardrobe. This type of color harmony makes for the greatest contrast between the surroundings and you. Other popular complimentary colors in pictures are green-red and orange-teal.

SAN FRANCISCO: Texture and Design

Big cities offer the widest range of designs and textures. In this case, I used a gate on a side-street in the North Beach neighborhood where we always stay San Francisco. The metal design also creates texture as we look through and past it to Lupe’s face. I was careful to get her facial features just right within the design of the gate. Her eyes, nose, lips and chin show in between the geometric metal curves. Her skin and coat have the most light and color saturation while her hat is the darkest part of the images. All contribute to guiding our eye to the subject of the portrait, Lupe’s beautiful face.

HANFORD: Analogous

An analogous color scheme is comprised of three colors found consecutively in the color wheel. In this picture, we have orange, yellow and green. This harmony is ideal for simplifying the setting around you in terms of colors (hues). This renders a stronger figure-to-ground contrast. That’s a photography term for making you “pop” from the background. If the door and its frame were of multiple colors such as plum purple, burgundy, dark blue, teal, magenta and highlighter yellow, the background could easily distract from the subject of the portrait.

On the other hand, with only orange, yellow and green, our eye easily goes to Renée. She wears the most saturated green in the frame. Her skin temperature is naturally warm which leans toward gold (yellow) and orange and it’s the most luminous of all colors within the image. In all, the analogous color scheme allows for Renée to really come forth in the picture. Renée chose this location which is well-known in Hanford as Chinese Alley for its history of Asian immigrants long ago.

HOLLYWOOD: Interesting Colors

Sometimes, a city wows you with color. This happened as Lupe López (my fiancée) and I walked along a street in Hollywood. We were shooting Latin Grammy Nominée rocker, Stefni Valencia on a street where she recently had shot her music video, “Mariposa.” We happened upon a café with this interesting entrance. The café’s door is to the right, not in view. I really liked that teal wall! It reminded me of Tiffany’s blue. The sun created interesting highlights in the background and her black and white wardrobe worked well for the setting. Then, it was a quick matter of directing the pose and voilà!

CONCLUSION

Urban portraits offer such a great diversity in composition, including colors, textures, design, architecture and more. I very much enjoy it because it’s interesting to scout locations for your photos and to work out how settings will harmonize with story that you wish to tell through your pictures.

Would you do a shoot in your hometown or in a city that has special meaning to you? Share with below your thoughts and comments.