Overcoming Fear in Portrait Photography: A Personal 12-Year Journey

From Fear to Frame: Why My Next Book Is About More Than Just Portraits

When I published Through Water & Ruin, it was the result of an unplanned disaster — quite literally. I never expected a flood to be the turning point that led me to share my work publicly. But it was. And after I crossed that threshold, I knew there was at least one more I needed to make.

August 2023: ‘My Journey Into Portraiture’. My first ever book project. Made only for myself.

Its working title: ‘My Journey into Portraiture’, though the truth is it’s about much more than portraits.

This is a book I’ve quietly been working on for years. In fact, the journey it captures spans more than twelve of them.The video above shows the first prototype. Back in my old pre-flood flat!

It’s about what it actually took — emotionally, creatively, practically — to get to a place where I could shoot portraits confidently, on my own. That means not in a class, not under someone else’s direction, not as a tagalong at a group workshop. But me. Organising it. Planning it. Facing the nerves.

‘My Journey Into Portraiture’ - Original Zine which was the starting point for my upcoming book!

And those nerves were real.

As much as I loved portrait photography — and I really did — something about doing it for real brought a kind of fear I hadn’t expected. It wasn’t just the usual imposter syndrome or fear of failure. It was a tangled mess of self-doubt, perfectionism, and just plain old anxiety. And what frustrated me was that no one seemed to talk about this part.

If you go looking for books on portraiture, you’ll find dozens. Most of them excellent, by photographers I admire — Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure is still one of my favourites. But they’re usually technical. They show you how to light, compose, or pose. What gear to use. Which lens to buy.

What they rarely show is what it feels like. The fear. The freeze. The ways you talk yourself out of pressing the shutter.

That’s the book I needed. So I’m writing it.

‘My Journey Into Portraiture’ - Original Zine which was the starting point for my upcoming book!

This will be another LumiNovel — the same large 8x10 format as Through Water & Ruin, but this time in hardback. A different feel in the hands, but guided by the same intent: to create something you sit with, not skim. The portraits are of models I’ve worked with over the years — each shoot a small act of courage, each frame a reflection of what I was learning to face. They’re not pristine or posed for perfection, but drawn from real attempts to move through fear and make honest work in spite of it.

I hope this book becomes a beacon for anyone who loves doing something, but struggles to actually do it. Not because they don’t know how, but because something invisible always seems to get in the way.

If that’s you — if you’ve ever felt that way — I think you’ll find something in these pages.

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