What Actually Separates a Good Portrait From a Great One

Show the same portrait to two working photographers and you can walk away with two opposite verdicts, one calling it strong and the other pulling it apart. Learning to read those reactions, and figuring out which ones are worth your attention, changes how quickly you grow.

That exact tension drives the latest episode of Ask David Bergman on Adorama, where David Bergman answers a viewer who showed one photo to two people and got wildly split opinions. Bergman breaks a portrait into three layers, starting with the technical floor every image has to clear. Focus lands first, and sharp eyes are usually non-negotiable unless the whole look is intentionally soft. From there he runs through exposure, color accuracy, skin tones, and distractions like heavy ISO noise or chromatic aberration. His point is blunt: two experienced photographers almost never argue about these things, so orange skin and soft eyes won't pass as a bold creative choice.

The middle layer is where personal taste starts to show up. Bergman describes the natural path most photographers walk, moving from snapping people in whatever light they find to choosing locations, bringing and shaping their own light, and directing subjects with purpose. Composition, gaze direction, depth of field, color grading, and how much you retouch all become deliberate decisions. He's clear that plenty of pros build entire careers right here and there's nothing lesser about it. What sets a strong result apart from a weak one is how skillfully the tools get used, not which tools get chosen. A moody, tight portrait made with real command of light works; the same setup with murky shadows and an accidental crop does not.

The third layer is the hardest to teach and, in Bergman's view, the most important. Intention and story sit underneath every technical and creative choice. He pushes past the surface question of where you put a subject and asks what that place actually says about the person standing in it. To ground this, he pulls in three portrait photographers who defined the craft in opposite directions. Richard Avedon argued that a portrait is never neutral, saying, "All photographs are accurate, none of them is the truth." Diane Arbus called a photograph "a secret about a secret," leaving interpretation to the viewer. Yousuf Karsh, known for dramatic studio lighting on famous faces, believed his job was to reveal the secret hidden inside every subject. Three careers, three definitions, one shared idea that technique is only the entry fee.

The debate Bergman is answering has quietly gotten louder as more images are made and judged by machines. Culling software now flags soft focus and closed eyes automatically, and camera makers keep pushing autofocus that locks onto an eye before you've finished framing. Those tools handle the technical floor for you, which means the layer that separates one photographer from another keeps shifting upward toward intention, connection, and point of view. Feedback that only ever addresses sharpness and exposure is checking a box a computer can now check too. The critic who spends time on why a subject's gaze pulls you out of the frame is operating on the layer that still belongs entirely to people. If you're trying to grow, sort incoming opinions by which layer they're speaking to, and give the most weight to the ones reaching for story and feeling.

Bergman closes with practical steps, and he doesn't dodge the original question. He tells the viewer the photographer who picked the photo apart probably wasn't being pretentious, since a confident opinion usually signals experience. The line only gets crossed when someone presents a personal take as the single correct answer. His tips run from nailing the technical every time to building a real connection with your subject before you raise the camera, and he saves a pointed one for last about chasing approval on every single frame. The full list, and the reasoning behind the one that ties everything together, is laid out near the end of the episode.

Press play on the video above to hear Bergman walk through all three layers and the seven tips he'd hand any photographer trying to sharpen their portraits.