A digital photo portrait of mother and child

Unlike many other photography styles, the subjects of portrait photography are often non-professional models. Family portraits commemorating special occasions, such as graduations or weddings, may be professionally produced or may be vernacular and are most often intended for private viewing rather than for public exhibition.

However, many portraits are created for public display ranging from fine art portraiture, to commercial portraiture such as might be used to illustrate a company's annual report, to promotional portraiture such a might be found on a book jacket showing the author of the book.

Digital photoportrait of a little girl

Portrait photography is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people (a group portrait), in which the face and expression is predominant. The objective is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the subject. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is the person's face, although the entire body and the background may be included. A portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the camera.

Digital Photoportrait

Photographs taken with this technique are characterized by blurred streaks emenating from the center of the photograph. The effect is nearly identical to a motion blur image in which the camera is traveling towards the subject. For this reason the zoom burst is typically used to create an impression of motion towards the subject.

Digital portrait photos

Zoom burst is a photographic technique, attainable with zoom lenses with a manual zoom ring. The term is sometimes attributed to Peter Bargh in his article Creative zoom bursts technique. Using the technique involves zooming while the shutter is open with a relatively slow shutter speed, generally below 1/60th of a second. For this reason low light or small apertures are required. It is also possible to achieve a similar effect with either computer software like Adobe Photoshop, (after the photo has been shot) or a photographic filter. In these cases the shutter speed can be as fast as necessary.