Make your subjects look their best with our professional portrait photography tips, covering lighting setups, location scouting and tips for working with models.
A large portion of everybody’s photo collection includes photos of people. There is no argument that high quality people portrait photos are impressive at projecting emotions and feelings and capturing the object’s character forever.
The portrait market demand reaches enormous levels especially when the requirement is almost every household across the globe in every civilized country. Think about this from another angle – you could target every building and what is more exciting is that repeat business is almost incalculable.
The photographer’s first task is to evaluate the facial features and decide which ones to emphasize and which ones to minimize. Long noses look best from a low angle for instance, and double chins respond well to a high camera angle, but this article will be aimed at the effects of lighting on the human face.
The golden rule when taking pictures of people is to always think about what you are doing before you press the shutter release. What do you hope to achieve?
Generally speaking, following some of these simple advice, even if you are using a point-and-shoot camera, whether digital or film, will make your pictures better.
What makes a great picture of people? Ninety percent of its quality lies in the facial expression, the rest is composition, lighting, and the natural presentation of body language.
“We don’t want any posed pictures” is a common admonishment from young people these days. What they mean is that they want to appear natural and relaxed in their portrait of the family. A certain amount of posing is a necessary evil in order to accomplish what they want.
Reflections from the skin of subjects can cause a good deal of bother and ruin the image for the photographer and model. Most times it is caused by harsh light falling on the subject and reflecting back to the camera. It can be made worse by certain skin tones and by types of make-up.
