It is also almost always incorrect.

The belief that someone is or is not photogenic assumes that photogenic is an inherent quality. Something you either possess or lack. This idea persists because it is simple, and simplicity is comforting. It allows people to stop asking harder questions.

The truth is less convenient.

Most people’s relationship with photography is shaped by moments where they had no control. Group photos. Phone cameras. Bad lighting. Rushed events. Images taken without consent or context. These photographs are then treated as evidence.

But photography is not evidence. It is interpretation.

Cameras do not tell the truth. They exaggerate, flatten, distort, and isolate. A single frame can misrepresent a person as easily as it can reveal them. Without intention, the camera defaults to randomness.

When someone says they are not photogenic, they are usually responding to randomness.

Photogenic is not a personal trait. It is an outcome. It emerges when conditions align: light, timing, posture, expression, and context. Remove any one of these and the outcome changes. Remove all of them and the result feels arbitrary.

Who decides who is photogenic? Often, no one consciously does. The label emerges socially. Certain faces are repeated in media. Certain expressions are rewarded. Others are ignored. Over time, people internalize these patterns and assume they are fixed.

They are not.

Professional portrait photography exists to counteract this randomness. Not by manipulating people, but by removing obstacles. By creating conditions where stillness is possible. Where expression is not forced. Where people are not reacting to a lens but responding to direction.

The idea that some people “just photograph well” ignores the invisible labor behind good portraits. Direction. Patience. Lighting. Experience. The absence of rush.

Most people have never experienced those conditions.

So they assume the problem is them.

It rarely is.

A good portrait does not ask someone to become more interesting. It asks them to stop bracing. To stop anticipating judgment. To stop performing for an imagined audience.

Photogenic is what happens when resistance drops.

That is not a personality trait. It is a state.

And states can be created.

But categories also simplify something that is rarely simple.

I often ask myself why I chose to do portraits when I am a person who can be referred to as introverted, portraits require you to be present in the moment and be a master of small talk, something I know I suck at (dont judge me, I try lol).  I could have chose other categories that requires less human interraction while still photographing humans.

I mean, Portrait photography exists quietly across nearly all genres. It shows up in corporate reports, political campaigns, graduation ceremonies, magazines, and personal milestones. It is often treated as a subset rather than a discipline. Something anyone can do if they have a camera and enough confidence.

That assumption is why portrait photography is misunderstood.

Portraits are not defined by genre. They are defined by intent. A portrait is an attempt to describe a person within a frame. That description can be formal or casual, restrained or expressive, but it is always interpretive. It is never neutral.

In an industry obsessed with spectacle, portraits demand restraint. They resist excess. They ask the photographer to pay attention rather than impress. This is not a popular requirement.

Portrait photography forces you to confront people as they are, not as props or elements in a larger composition. You cannot hide weak direction behind dramatic lighting forever. You cannot rely on technical virtuosity to compensate for lack of connection.

That is precisely why I stayed with it.

Portraits are unforgiving in a productive way. They reveal gaps in understanding quickly. They show you when you are rushing, when you are projecting, when you are not truly present. The feedback loop is immediate, even if it is subtle.

In a world where photography is increasingly automated, portrait photography remains stubbornly human. It requires conversation, timing, empathy, and restraint. These are not things you can outsource to presets or algorithms.

Choosing portrait photography is not a rejection of other categories. It is an acceptance of complexity. People are more complex than products. More unpredictable than architecture. Less cooperative than landscapes.

That unpredictability is not a flaw. It is the point.

Portraits also age differently. A well-made portrait does not announce the year it was taken. It does not rely on visual trends to hold attention. It survives because it is anchored in human presence, not aesthetics.

In an industry that rewards speed and volume, portrait photography rewards patience. It teaches you to slow down without losing precision. To direct without dominating. To observe without judging.

It is not the loudest category. It is not the flashiest. It does not promise spectacle.

What it offers instead is depth.

And depth, over time, becomes clarity.

This feels really weird, if I am being honest with you, this is not something I thought I will do in a million years, but neither did photography but here I am, 15 years deep and still gunning it. So why not dip my hand in the never ending well of blogging, even saying it sounds *one kain* (shout out to my Naija people)

When I first bought my camera, I wasn’t thinking about careers, I was thinking about curiosity, about freezing moments like my old man did. My dad had a Yashica 35, he loved that camera to pieces, at the time I didn't understand why one man would love taking pictures so much, I never really understood the point of it until I saw that those pictures where the only things that reminded him of the life he once lived when Alzheimers got the better of him. I don't like talking about that phase of life cos it makes me really sad and this blog is not about that.

Like most people at the beginning, I assumed photography was mostly about equipment and settings. The longer I stayed with it, the clearer it became that those things mattered far less than I thought. My early years were unremarkable in the best possible way. I photographed anything that would stay still long enough. Friends. Events. Streets. Faces. I said yes to work before I knew how to price it, and I learned more from mistakes than from successes. The camera was always present, but the understanding was slow.

What changed wasn’t the gear. It was repetition.

Over time, you begin to notice patterns. You see how people tense up the moment a camera is raised. You recognize the difference between a polite smile and a real one. You learn that confidence and comfort rarely arrive at the same time, and that good photographs often happen in the space between them.

I did not set out to become a portrait photographer. Portraits found me gradually, through circumstance and repetition. Someone would ask for a headshot. Another would ask for something “simple.” Then another. Faces became familiar terrain, not because they were easy, but because they were endlessly variable.

Portrait photography has a way of removing shortcuts. You cannot hide behind spectacle. You cannot rely on novelty for long. Eventually, you are left with a person, a frame, and a few seconds of shared attention. That simplicity is deceptive. It exposes everything you don’t yet understand.

As the work expanded, so did the environments. Corporate spaces. Academic institutions. Public events. Situations where time mattered, pressure existed, and expectations were unspoken but firm. These settings taught discipline. They taught consistency. They taught restraint.

They also taught humility.

Photography has a way of reminding you that no matter how much experience you accumulate, you are always working with variables you cannot fully control. Light changes. People change. Context shifts. The work demands presence more than certainty.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped chasing photographs and started building them. I became more interested in what happens before the shutter than after it. How people arrive. How they settle. How posture shifts when someone stops performing and starts existing.

That shift changed everything.

The longer I photographed, the less interested I became in dramatic gestures and the more interested I became in subtle ones. A shoulder relaxing. A breath slowing. A moment of stillness that lasts just long enough to be recorded.

This journal is not an attempt to summarize a career or turn experience into authority. It is simply a place to articulate what time has clarified. To write about photography, yes, but also about attention, patience, and the strange intimacy of pointing a camera at another human being.

I did not start writing earlier because I thought I needed more certainty. What I understand now is that certainty is not the point. Observation is.

This is a record of those observations.