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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.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to go through a selection of photography use cases, starting with the band photograph.

Everyone likes taking photos of bands, it captures a real moment of energy, but it’s a notoriously tricky place to get a good shot. Hopefully the following will help you work out the kind of camera you want to get the results you’re after.

The Band Photograph

The angle
Angles are important in band photos. There’s often more than one person on stage and you will want to do 2 things.

1. Capture the whole band

You’ll need a wide angle lens for this, something like 18mm. Most compact cameras go this wide and most dSLRs come with a wide angle kit lens so there’s not too much to worry about here.

2. Focus on the main performer

It’s easy to forget about the band as a whole so I always start with the wide shots and then start my close up work. I usually use a 105mm lens. It gives the freedom to do mid range shots but is fine for closeups so long as the stage isn’t too far away. You’ll obviously need a telephoto lens for this.

The rules of shooting will be reasonably similar in wide and close angle work in a gig situation so let’s go through the process:

Setting up
There are 3 important variables when taking band photos. They don’t always apply when you arrive at the gig but they always need to be considered at the preparatory stage.

1. The constant

As you work you’ll need a constant. That is to say, a setting that never changes. Some compacts and virtually all SLRs allow you to change all of your settings. The constant at a gig is shutter speed.
Set your shutter speed to 1/60th of a second. You’ll need it to be this fast for telephoto work as anything slower will amplify the shaking of your hand. A 60th is also good for capturing motion in the band members at wide angles but fast enough to get a crisp shot of a singer at their microphone.
With this constant in mind we work in the other settings, with the end goal being a correctly exposed image.

2. Light

As I said earlier, light is something you need to plan for. It is always a good idea to research the venue beforehand, look at their image gallery to see what kind of light is likely to be available. Then expect them to have forgotten to hire a lighting technician or that they decided to go for a dark, moody set the one night you choose to take photos!
At best expect the light to be changeable.

If you want to be safe, and also to get some great results, pack a flash. If you’re using a compact you’ll have one built in. If you’re using an SLR you can get a hotshoe-mountable flash. I highly recommend one with a pivotable head. You will want to bounce the light.
For non flash work you will now need to determine a balance between your ISO sensitivity and your aperture.

3. ISO and Aperture

As discussed in my Digital Camera Video ISO determines the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor to light and aperture determines how much light is let in through the lens. The trade off is graininess at high ISOs and a shallow depth of field at wide apertures.
Having a wide aperture is going to be fine for the close up shots as you don’t need anything in the background. With this in mind set your aperture as wide as possible. My 105mm goes to f2.8 so that’s what I use.

Now that we have 2 settings we need to determine the 3rd, ISO.
This is easy now. Just look at the scene through your viewfinder and adjust the ISO until you are correctly exposed.

You’re now ready to start taking photos. I hope the band are still playing!

Taking the Photo

How you take the photos is up to you. My advice is to get close. Get closer than anyone else. Don’t be afraid to intrude. These people are performers, they want to have their photos taken and people want to see those photos!
What you will need to do as you work is watch the light. If it’s changeable you’ll need to be prepared to adjust accordingly. If it’s static look for the interesting shot. If it’s too dark to get a decent picture use it to your advantage. Look for what’s called ‘rim lighting’ and set your camera to expose for that. The result will definitely be interesting. It will reveal form and features through shadow and I guarantee you you’ll be the only person with a sharp photo that night.

When you’re taking wide angle shots you might want to try increasing your ISO and your aperture. That way you will get the drummer, who is always tucked away at the back, in more focus. If you ever plan to sell your images to the band make sure you get lots of the drummer! Drummers always get missed out and they’ll be very pleased to see you’ve snapped him or her.

If you’re using a flash you can bring your ISO down. Point the flash at the ceiling but pick where you stand. Lots of venues have strange black ceilings or piping for their air conditioning. All of these things will cause you to either lose light or get a colour cast in your photo. The latter isn’t much of a problem as you can correct it at a later date or just work in black and white but make sure you’re not wasting those precious flash batteries by firing it into a ceiling cavity!

There’s nothing left now but to get out there and start snapping! Look for interesting angles, try and be different, be aware of your surroundings and your settings. Get to know your camera and the nuances between the way the settings interact and you’ll have a very satisfying evening.

Recommended Cameras for Band Photography

Compacts

Canon Powershot G10
Nikon Coolpix P6000

With vibration reduction to help stabilise the shot, a full set of manual functions and high ISO ranges the Nikon P6000 and Canon Powershot G10 are the compact gig cameras of choice. They’re both robust enough to put up with anything and have proper viewfinders. Using the viewfinder helps stabilise the camera further as it’s close to your body and rested on your face instead of at arms length. Both cameras also come with hotshoes totally freeing you to experiment with an extra flash. Both have bright lenses at f2.8 and f2.7 at their widest and have good telephoto zooms at 140mm and 112mm respectively.

dSLRs

Pentax K200D

The K200D is an excellent starting dSLR. It has vibration reduction built in to the camera body itself which means that you don’t have to pay a fortune for expensive VR lenses. Pentax have a vast range of lenses, almost all of which will work on this feature packed entry level dSLR.

Nikon D90

Built on a legacy of prosumer camera ranges that made headlines years ago with the D70, the D90 builds on and expands with a sturdy body and VR lens ranging from 18 to 105mm, perfect for band photography.
Over half of the photos on this article were taken with my old D70. It’s still going strong!

Next week… The Portrait