Taking Photographs Guide: The Portrait (Part 1 - Location)
Portraits are always important, whether they’re serious, professional records or just that close up holiday snap, they always serve to capture a memory. Sometimes the moment itself is enough to make the portrait powerful but those moments can equally be missed if you’re not fully prepared. This week’s guide is designed to help you make the most of those moments, be they impromptu or posed.
The first part of the portrait tutorial will focus on what to keep in mind when choosing a location.
Choosing your location
It may be that you’re out and about, or that you’re somewhere where you can carefully pick your scene. Either way you can still maintain a lot of control when taking a photo with just a bit of awareness.
The Eyes:
Throughout this guide my discussion will be relating to illuminating the eyes as much as possible. The eyes are the first part of the face that someone is drawn to when viewing a portrait and for that reason they are the most important aspect of a portrait photo.
When focusing, it is sensible to focus on the nearest eye to you. Having sharp focus on the eye allows the viewer to connect with the image immediately and then explore the finer details afterwards.
Lighting:
Outdoor:
The sun will feature if you’re outside and can be extremely harsh as a directional light, however, it can also serve as a great ‘fill’ light as it reflects. Look for large white walls that you could use to capture some of that light as it bounces back onto your subject. A great tip, and something currently very popular with photographers, is to use the sun as a backlight, behind your subject, and then reflect that same light onto the front of them. You can do this using the white wall I mentioned or by using a conventional reflector. Alternatively you can have some fun by making your own reflector. The fun and interesting results of photography are always unlocked by messing around and getting thoroughly involved in your work so why not get a large board, something like a dinner tray, and cover it in silver foil. Take it outside and see how you can bounce sunlight back onto your subject. Be careful in full daylight as it can be extremely bright!
The result of such a photo is that your subject has a brilliant bright rim light from the sun as well as a more diffuse, but natural, light on the face, with a lot of light bouncing around in the eyes to illuminate and reveal the iris.
- The below photo is taken at 3pm on a summer day with a reflector bouncing the sun, which is behind the subject, back onto her face.
Indoor:
If you’re inside try and work near a window. Not only do they reflect brilliantly in people’s eyes, which offers more of an interesting ’story’ behind the photo, they can also be used with curtains to great effect.
The intention when working near a window is to be able to see its reflection in your subject’s eyes so have them facing the window, or just to the side of it. If you have the window behind your subject you will get 1 of 2 things:
- A ‘blown’ background - This is where the sky goes pure white as it overexposes because your foreground is dark.
- A dark subject - This is because your camera is trying to get the best general exposure and is trying to account for the bright sky.
- The above shot was taken using just a conservatory skylight for illumination.
Again, feel free to try and reflect some of the light back at the other side of your subject. The dynamic use of light will create more interesting shadows and highlights, which reveals form and makes for a more interesting and intriguing photo.
When it’s next winter, or if you’re planning a chilly holiday, look for snow. Snow is a perfect natural reflector and provides really brilliant, clean light to a subject.
- The below photo was taken with a flash pointed directly at the snow.
Overall lighting:
Experiment with your light source. Get yourself a patient subject. It doesn’t even have to be a person. Take a series of photos with the model at different angles to your light source and see what direction best reveals the subject’s eyes and their features. In general a light source that is directly on the camera’s own plane, such as a built-in flash, will give the least interesting results. Shadows give form to features and make things much more interesting.
Tomorrow part 2 of ‘Taking Photographs Guide: The Portrait’ will focus on how to work with your subject.
Tags: camera, family, flash, guide, indoor, lighting, outdoor, photography, portrait, tutorial
Blog posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 5:19 pm under Cameras. Leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Don't miss an article, click here to get DWTB by RSS
