Charm really does come thru your lens
Do you know Bruno Mars's song "Just The Way You Are"? There's a music video to it. In the video, the woman is beautiful, but if you look at it and watch her interaction, you see her charm and become attracted to her. 
Since I started taking model photos, this has been my goal. I want to engage the viewer and draw them into my photo. The way a model's gaze draws in the viewer is something we previously referred to as model engagement. If you look at that photo, that magazine, that whatever, and the model's beauty not only captures your gaze but makes you feel like you're being looked at, then we, as creator and subject, have achieved our goal: to draw you in.
Because early on, it was difficult for me to articulate what I meant, I used the words "I fell in love with the subject..." meaning that if I were someone who really knew and loved this person, how would I photograph them in such a way that best portrays that person in the photo so that when that loved one saw the photo, they could say, 'Yeah, that's how I know that person best.'
Yes, that sounds like I'm making stuff up or silly, but I don't know how to describe what I wanted to do. I slowly got to know the person I was photographing, trying to 'show' who this person really was.
Early in my career, I photographed only people that I really knew. Then, after a while, I would see people I thought would photograph well. I would work up the courage to introduce myself and speak to them about what I was doing and wanted to accomplish. Hopefully, they would see what I wanted and agree to create.
The sample photos here show models, and I use that word loosely; I don't mean supermodels or fashion models, but models in the sense that I am the artist, and they would "model" for me to aid me in bringing my vision to life.
I realized that I hadn't done something like this in a long time. This approach reminds me of those YouTube or TikTok posts where a photographer approaches strangers on the street and asks to photograph them. Similar, but in my case, I get to know and understand them better before I pick up my camera.
