Portrait Photography Focusing Tips: When to focus on the eye and when it’s irrelevant.
One thing I’ve always emphasized on is focusing on the eye when shooting close up portraits. Whenever you do portraits you should focus on the eye which makes your picture stand out. Of course there is always an exception in photography. The question is, should you always focus on the eye or if it’s okay to focus on the face sometimes? The answer is yes, you can focus on the face only if your subject is further away from the camera.
The reason why it’s okay to focus on the face instead of the eye sometimes is because your subject may not be too close to the camera and the eyes are not the main focal point of the picture. Sometimes you go with really shallow depth of field by focusing on the eye and blur out everything else in the background. But when you photograph something from a distance you automatically get greater depth of field and the focusing would be the same if you were to place the square focal point on the eye or on the nose. This only applies when it’s not a close up shot. The closer you are to your subject, the shallower the depth of field will get which requires precise focusing.
In the bridal portrait you’ll see that the sharp focus was on the eye. Had I placed the focal point on her forehead or nose, then the eyes would have been soft which would make this picture really flat.
So if you’re focusing on the subject who is standing in the distance then you don’t have to perfectly align the focusing point on the eye to take that portrait because either way the picture would look the same.
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Written by Jibran
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