Some Thoughts on Portrait Photography

I got interested in portrait and headshot photography about two years ago. I joined a number of Facebook groups, purchased some books on portrait photography and started following portrait photographers on Instagram. So, what is a portrait? "A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer". A headshot is defined as "a photograph of a person's face, that usually includes their shoulders. It can be taken from different angles and is usually used in a professional context, like on social media or professional website. It usually only includes one person, and they are the main subject in your photo." Now if you join a lot of social media sites that are portrait sites you might be left scratching your head. Seems like a lot of photographers have a very loose definition of portraiture. Certainly in many of the photos it is not the face and expression that is predominant, it is the body, often the scantily clad body of a female model. Personally I don't think these photos should fall into the portrait photography category. I prefer to refer to them as fine art nude photography, or boudoir photography. Of course if you point this out on any of the social media posts, you can be assured that you will get some pretty negative feedback. Do you think that a photograph of someone, half dressed, sitting on the hood of a car should be considered a portrait? Now I do realize there can be environmental portraits such as a chef in a kitchen or an executive standing in front of a building, but again for me these types of portraits do not fall under the category of portraiture. What do you think? Leave your comments below.