Portrait Photography Ideas and Tips
A Portrait is described as a photographic or artistic visual representation of a person. Almost everyone has taken a portrait before. Therefore, it is also one of the most common usage for a camera.
Portraits can look impactful or look stiff. It really depends on the composition and the lighting conditions. The followings are some tips for taking better portraits:
1. Keep the Subject in focus
To enhance the attention to the Subject or person in mind, it is always a good idea to keep the background as low key as possible. There are several ways of doing this:
a. Use a uniformly coloured background. This is often in the case of studio photography. Alternatively, chose a clutter free wall as a backdrop.
b. Diffuse the background by keeping a narrow or shallow depth of field (DOF). This means that a lower F-number or F-stop is preferred. This is because high F-number like F/32 will make the background (in fact everything) in the frame sharp.
2. Draws attention to the Eyes of the Subject
The eyes of a person is the most expressive part of a human face. It tells a lot about the mood and characteristics of a person. For example, eyes that show alot of white tends to be melancholic. Eyes with large pupils tends to be more youthful and almost naive. When taking portraits try to bring out the expressions of the Person’s eyes. This will make a portrait much more expressive.
3. Talk and communicate with the Subject.
This is an aspect of portrait photography that is often overlooked. Nevertheless, this is one of the most important process for allowing the Subjects’ essence and character to be expressed physically. By maintaining good communication with the Subject, we can put them at ease and thus allow their natural personality to shine through. We are not just taking a photo here, we are also attempting to capture their personality on print as well.
4. Frame the Subject correctly with relation to the size of the frame
We do not always need to frame the entire body of the Subject or Person into the scene. Often, it it better to have a closer view of the person’s face.
We have covered some basic photography pointers for Portrait Taking. There are really no hard and fast rules, though. Additionally, flexibility and creativity play important parts in bringing about more interesting composition too. Thank you for reading.
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