A photographing method, medium, and apparatus based on face detection in a portable camera. The portable photographing apparatus may include an image input unit that receives an image, a face detection unit that detects a face from the received image, a storage unit that stores the image detected by the face detection unit as a moving image in a first mode, and a quality evaluation unit that evaluates the quality of the image detected by the face detection unit and stores the same as a still image in a second mode upon satisfaction of predetermined conditions evaluated based on the quality evaluation of the still image.