Tip of the Week: 16 Portrait Photography Tricks to Try in 2016
Whether you love the portraits you take or you hate them with a passion, there’s always room to grow and challenge yourself. In the new year, give these quick and simple portrait photography tips a try and see the positive impacts they can have on the images you create.
Keep It Simple
Sometimes you will get the best images when you go bare bones – just you, your model, your camera, and a lens. Take an opportunity to leave the tripods, flashes, and backgrounds behind and see what you can do with a minimal setup.
Use Natural Materials as Reflectors
Try not to lock yourself into using just the five-in-one reflector you bought on Amazon! A white wall, sand at the beach, water, and countless other natural materials can be used as a reflector. The more creative you get with lighting, especially natural lighting, the better off your images will be.
Overexpose on Purpose
Sure, overexposing an image is often a mistake, but when you do it purposefully, you can create an image that is sleek, bright, and clean and helps bring the viewer’s attention to the primary subject.
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Blur on Purpose
Show off your creativity by creating a portrait in which the subject is out of focus. Focus on a prop or an environmental element to show the relationship between it and your subject. It can make for a unique portrait that tells a much more interesting story. Just be sure that your level of blur is significant enough such that viewers understand that it was done on purpose.
But If You Want Your Subject in Focus, Check and Check Again
There is little that will ruin a portrait faster than it being unintentionally out of focus. To make sure you’re spot on with sharpness, use your camera’s live view and zoom in on the model’s eyes. If their eyelashes are clear and sharp, the rest of the image will be too.
Get Focused for Group Shots
Group portraits are difficult to do well, and for many reasons. But one of the biggest issues is where to set your focus point. For the best results, make sure the person nearest to you is in sharp focus and let depth of field do the work for the rest of the people in the image. The person in front will be where viewer’s eyes are drawn first, so you better have that person in sharp focus!
Contrast Wardrobes With Locations
If your portrait subjects are wearing brightly colored shirts, you will need to tone down the intensity of their questionable wardrobe choices by contrasting it with a muted backdrop. Whether that’s a gray background in a studio or a blurred out, dark forest, it will take the sting out of high contrast wardrobes. The inverse is also true – when subjects are wearing clothes that are pretty blah, pair them with a more exciting background.
It’s also fun to juxtapose well-dressed subjects with a laid-back location and vice versa. For example, take your casually-dressed clients to a formal garden or your client that’s dressed to the nines to an alleyway. It makes for an interesting visual dynamic!
It’s Not Always About the Face
Faces are great for portraits, but there are lots of other body parts that can be highlighted in a portrait as well. Hands and feet make for intimate and fun photos. Don’t be afraid of the backside either! An image of a person walking away from the camera can be just as impactful as an image of that person staring right down the barrel of the lens.
But When It is About the Face, Fill the Frame
Don’t be afraid to get in close on your subject’s face. Doing so allows you to highlight the little details that get lost when you take a half-body or full-body photo. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, so give your viewers a good view and zoom in!
Get a Fast Lens
A fast lens, like a 50mm f/1.8, is great for all kinds of portraiture, including candids, action shots, or even nighttime portraits. Best of all, 50mm lenses can be bought on the cheap, with results that are more than worth the relatively small price tag.
Tilt Your Horizon
Try an off-kilter portrait to add a little fun and dimension to the shot. It makes for a more unique portrait that will stand out from the rest, even if it will drive your landscape photography friends mad.
Remember the Best Camera is the One You Have With You
Sure, your Hasselblad takes better pictures than your iPhone, but there might be times when all you have with you is your phone. Don’t be a gear snob and miss out on an opportunity to capture a wonderful moment – pull out your phone or point-and-shoot and fire away!
It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect
It’s easy to get caught up in the notion that your portrait has to be perfect, but there’s something to be said for capturing those natural moments in which everything is decidedly not perfect. You very well may capture a much more genuine and heartfelt moment if you forget about perfection and simply shoot.
But…Slowing Down Can Get a More Perfect Shot
Try getting away from the machine gun method of portraiture and slow things down. Be methodical. Pretend you’re shooting with film. Being more purposeful and thoughtful about what you do can net you the image you’ve been dreaming of much more quickly than rapid firing exposures.
Do What You Love
If you love taking portraits of cats, own it! If you really like traditional, posed portraits, go for it! If you don’t love what you’re doing, it will show in your images. Be who you are and you will be able to create better images because of it.
Resolve to Learn More
There isn’t a photographer in the world that knows everything about portraiture. So whether you’ve just started taking portraits or you’ve been doing it for decades, find an opportunity to learn in the new year. Take a class, read a book, or go out and shoot with other photographers. Just get involved and see what you can learn that will change your portraits for the better.
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Conclusion
While this certainly isn’t a comprehensive list of everything you can do to improve your portraits next year, it’s a great start! Essentially, it’s all about focusing on technique, opening your mind to new ways of doing things, and committing yourself to putting in the work to learn more and get involved in the photography community. Do these things, and you will be well on your way to better portraits!