There’s a moment in every portrait session — if you’re lucky, if you’re patient — when the subject stops performing. It might be a sideways glance, a pause between breaths, a hand that forgets it’s being watched. That’s the moment Betina LaPlante is always waiting for. In this episode of the Nerdy Photographer Podcast, I sit down with the London-born, LA-based portrait photographer to talk about what it really means to earn someone’s trust before you ever pick up the camera and how to get natural, authentic portraits.
Betina’s approach to portraiture is rooted in a simple but radical commitment: honesty. Whether she’s photographing celebrated actors like Charles Dance or Christopher Lloyd, or a dear friend who genuinely dreads being in front of a lens, her method is the same — put the camera down, have a conversation, and let the relationship do the heavy lifting. She rarely directs her subjects in any conventional sense. Instead, she creates the conditions for an unguarded moment to happen naturally, often catching the most powerful images in the in-between spaces — when someone is taking an internal break, or simply forgetting, for a second, that they’re being photographed at all. It’s an approach that prizes witnessing over manufacturing, and it shows in the quiet, searching quality of her work.
The conversation digs into the technical choices that serve that emotional truth — her love of natural light, her preference for a 35mm lens that adds character without distortion, and a deep-rooted connection to black and white that goes all the way back to losing herself in a darkroom she built in her own bathroom after art college. She also shares a fascinating perspective on hands: why she photographs them as often as faces, why they tell truths the face has learned to conceal, and why the hands of someone who has worked hard all their life can be as expressive as any set of eyes. Betina and I also venture into more philosophical territory — a discussion of film photography as a kind of physical communion between subject and image, and what it means that human perception itself can be fooled — that lands somewhere genuinely unexpected and beautiful.
“If you want to find your style, it has to be within something that interests you — it has to be something you’re passionate about.”
Betina La Plante
For photographers still searching for their voice, Betina’s advice is both generous and clear: start with what you actually love. Not the genre you think you should be shooting, not the style that’s getting traction on social media — but the subject matter that makes you curious, that pulls you in, that you’d want to spend time with even if the camera weren’t there. For Betina, that’s people. And it comes through in every frame.
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About My Guest
“Fine Art, Portrait and Film Stills photographer”
You can see more of Betina’s work at betinalaplante.com and follow her on Instagram at @betinalaplante
Ready to Create More Honest Portraits?
Did my discussion with Betina make you think differently about how you approach portraits? Do you want to try more unposed portrait photography? I would love to hear what sort of impact our talk had. Find me on social media and let me know or leave a review and let EVERYONE know.
