40 Fantastic Female Portraits

Peter Sawyer on Jan 12th 2010 with 24 comments

This entry is part 5 of 14 in the Portraits Session
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Today we’ve pulled together an inspiring collection of gorgeous female portraits. Photographing people can be a challenging and rewarding art, and these photos will hopefully inspire you with new techniques, lighting examples, and composition. I hope you enjoy the roundup, and feel free to share your own examples in the comments!

40 Inspiring Examples

Credit goes to the original photographers, please click on each of the pictures to view more of the photographer’s work and see an enlarged version of the photo.

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Check out these handy tutorials here on Phototuts+ about portrait photography!

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Thanks For Reading!

I hope you enjoyed looking through these images, and please make sure you comment on the original photographer’s photos as well! Feel free to share links to other inspiring images – your own, or other’s – in the comments.

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By Peter Sawyer

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

I am a freelance graphics designer from Ipswich in the UK. You might know me as Peewee1002, I run a popular Photoshop tutorial site here: http://PSDtutorials.co.uk. Feel free to get in touch via twitter, I love a good chat with other photographers and designers! You can also find me on Photodune by the name peewee1002.

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http://twitter.com/xxxbngxxx Bryan Grajales
Wow, these really are amazing pictures, I noticed most of them are from Deviantart. :)
Thanks for posting, I really got inspired for some cool pictures of my mother today. ;)

http://www.peewee1002.co.uk Peewee1002
Author
Hey thanks.
Most are from deviant art due to me having to message every single person personally and asking for permission.
Flickr has a block on how many messages you can send out and only a couple of people replied! Where as deviant art is unlimited (also I am premium member)
I will try and focus on a few more different places for my next roundup though!

http://dullface.deviantart.com/ Dullface
Peewee1002, you’re a good man! Thank you muchly!
I’m thrilled to see you included Benoitpalie’s work, I strive greatly to achieve what he does.
http://matko666.deviantart.com/ Matjaz
That is great, realy great.
http://joshboulton.co.uk Josh
Some absolutely stunning shots there!
esiak
http://esiak.deviantart.com/art/Deni-134344634
http://esiak.deviantart.com/art/grandmother-112256204
http://esiak.deviantart.com/art/childhood-112254882
great!:)
Raoul
Great shots (!) but where are the copyrights ?
R.
http://jhaygamba.com Jhay Gamba
Great!!!!
http://photographyforsoul.com Can Berkol
i would love to read about why you have selected each photo. although i respect everyone’s decisions, for my own taste some of these photos aren’t really that great. Maybe if you hade a one-two sentence explanation why you have picked each photo, i would have aggreed with you on all of the photos.

Dimitris Bor
I agree with Can…
And to my opition not all of these photos are “portraits”.
For example the photo of an eye is not a portrait, except if its a portrait of an eye and not a portrait of a person.
I think that in a portrait you should be able to recognize who the person is.
http://www.peewee1002.co.uk Peewee1002
Author
No worries……. will try and do it tomorrow or the day after.

http://photo.nowhere.no Stein H
Great selection of photos
http://www.cashbackprinting.com Tom
Nice collection you got here. Females, nom nom
http://blogpost.dj23.net/ jared thompson
amazing collection of portraits, brilliant selection of young and old in all types and styles.
Chris
Would be great to see some from Flickr.
Here are a couple of my favourite female artists on Flickr who do self portraits. I think they deserve a mention:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolebronet/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shannooners/
Jared
Some awesome, some good, some awfully average or cliché. I find a lot of the “trends” dA rides through can be damaging to good photographers over time. Lately (and over the past 24 months), people have moved from high contrast images to the cyan and magenta tones/temperatures to emulate that 60′s film look. But girls like Kayleigh have remained original and individual since they started. I think if you’re a girl photographer into fashion and portraiture, the less time you spend there, the better you’ll be in your career.

http://dullface.deviantart.com/ Dullface
Welll said.

http://www.the-impassioned-eye.de/ Robert
it seems like you didn’t get the right link at the picture in the subway with orange hair… it’s linked to the old woman with glasses
http://rbrtanaya.deviantart.com RBRTanaya
This is Amazing, NICE WORK
http://www.jsddesigner.com.br/ Jonathan Dos Santos
Nossa! ótimo post, belas fotografias parabéns!.
—
Wow! great post, beautiful pictures congratulations!.
http://mishalov.ru Mishalov.ru
Good fotographers and amazing photos! Thanks for giving a posibility to watch this nice works!
jim
nice tut!~
Wolfie
I love that girl on the beach, she’s beautiful
http://www.facebook.com/sandy.fisher.12 Sandy Fisher
The looks and Attitudes says it all The ladies look Fantastic it takes a Great eye to see beyond Just beauty but the soul….. A few from Califdreamz Photography

40 Fantastic Female Portraits