In this study, the existing techniques of face recognition are to be encountered along with their pros and cons to conduct a brief survey. The most general methods include Eigenface (Eigenfeatures), Hidden Markov Model (HMM), geometric based and template matching approaches. This survey actually performs analysis on these approaches in order to constitute face representations which will be discussed as under. In the second phase of the survey, factors affecting the recognition rates and processes are also discussed along with the solutions provided by different authors.