A portrait is a photo depicting a person and showing something about their character. Good portraits are intentional. By this, I mean that a viewer can get a general meaning from a quick look over but can find deeper meaning if they look closer. Since photos can have different meanings from person to person, the same photo may be called ‘good’ by one person and ‘obsolete’ by another. This may be harder to express through a smaller object, but close-ups may be just the method for an artist’s vision. Abstraction also makes meaning harder or easier to express. However, abstraction ceases to be a portrait if it is no longer clear what the viewer is looking at.

A portrait needs to contain a person. The implied existence of one does not make the cut. The line between implied existence and a person being in a photo is clear. For example, if a person’s shadow was in the photo, it would depend on the context of the photo to make it a portrait or not.

A sequence of images would not be one portrait. Instead, it would be several portraits with a common goal.