If you take pictures just like those pictures in men's magazines and fashion magazines, showing "attitude", barechested, folded arms, cool, what are your images going to be? Just another guy with an "attitude", barechested, folded arms etc.
Look at the magazines. Is there a "sameness" to the images? Are you contented to also "join the crowd"? Or do you have a unique vision of what being a man is? If you do not have a unique vision of what a man is, and just imitates the magazines, then your images will be repetition of the same stuff in magazines. If you have your own vision, then show what a "real man" is in your own way.
You cannot bring out the character of a person. You can't. Because you just do not know that person. A few minutes or a few hours or even a few years later, you still cannot know the person. What you can possibly know is what that person chosed to reveal to you. What you can do is to make a story of that person, a biography. If you can do that, that would be a powerful portrait. I am still trying to learn that myself. Not there yet, by a long shot. But I know what I am looking forward to. I know my goal.
