Photography is creative art, not performing art. The emphasis is not on how well the photograph conforms to standards of light, or composition, or distance or perspective, but on the story it tells.
Photos in which your friends or family sit around and smile at the camera are stories as well, but they are limited. A few people will want to know the story, hear it again and again, but it is a story that is very old and oft-repeated: people sitting around and smiling. People who aren’t in the photo will be more interested in a story with drama.
But all portraits aren’t that limited. Some, taken candidly, or at the other extreme, in extremely contrived poses and compositions, can tell a story that people will want to hear- and if it’s a great photograph, a story that they will want to hear again and again.
The storyteller must realise this, and decide which stories he wants to tell.
well put.