Photos of people are literally everywhere. With the invention of photography, people could know what someone looked like before they ever met them. Before that they could look from prints of drawings or paintings, but I'm sure most of the people one met were not drawn or painted. Therefore, to know what someone looked like, one had to meet them. Now we know what people look like all across the world. I know what a person in Finland looks like. I met her five years ago, but I know exactly what she looked like two weeks ago hanging out with her friends. Although nobody ever told me, I know her hair is no longer red. Everyone knows what Barack Obama looks like, though many of us have never met or seen him. We know that at the end of his campaign, his hair had a slightly more grayish tint than when he started.
Today I've seen so many portraits. Just looking through a magazine, there are so so sooo many portraits. Even a food magazine has several scattered throughout its pages. Those portraits are usually very colorful, inviting us to either desire to make the food, buy the clothes, or read the articles. In my bedroom there are so many posters covering the walls (and the floor...). Not one poster has an image without a person in it. And most have several people. And then on social networking sites there are pictures everywhere of people we know (and ones we don't). These pictures are posted by the people in them and usually because they think they look attractive in it. Or else the picture expresses who they are and what type of person they are. Some people have several profile pictures on Facebook (meaning they change their picture often). For some reason these pictures always look roughly the same. On the other hand, people who don't change their profile picture generally have pictures that look very different.
Although portraits are everywhere, the portraits on facebook ten to be snapshots of people at events, photos taken to capture a moment or just for fun. The portraits in a magazine are trying to sell something and the people are always attractive. Posters tend to vary a lot. If it's a movie poster, it is trying to make the movie look appealing while letting the viewer know what the movie is going to be like simply from the image. These portraits can be anything from dramatic to humorous.
Portraits may be everywhere, but somehow people never get tired of them. I know I love portraits, and when I have to photograph anything but a person, I get lost. That's how I end up photographing stuffed animals, I guess. I can humanize them.
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