Portraits Through History

As long as people have made art there have been portraits. For the first few thousand years portraits, whether drawn, painted or sculpted, were mostly reserved for those deemed important enough to be honored with a work of art bearing their likenesses. The wealthy—mostly royalty and nobility—and important religious and historic figures were the most common subjects. For their projects students learned how to capture something essential about the person they photographed using what they learned about digital photography and being attentive to lighting, focus, camera angle.