Portrait photography captures a portrait of a person or group of people. Portraiture is a challenging genre of photography because it needs to use lighting, backdrop, and posing to convey the personality of the subject in a single shot. Self-portraits and silhouettes, as well as headshots, also fall under this genre.
Lighting especially plays a big role in setting up a portrait, with high-key brightly lit shots being common. There are plenty of other lighting options to consider as well. Fast, medium telephoto lenses are preferred, used to isolate the subject by controlling the depth of field. When away from the studio, using the lens’ bokeh effect to blur the background elements that are out of focus can provide an easy solution to not shooting on a clean background. Environmental portraits, those that are meant to show the subject in their environment, would not want to have much, if any, background blur, however.