Portrait Photography

On my last post on portrait photography I mentioned about knowing your model's name and encouraged to get to know their personality to create a relax and fun ambiance. Today's post is more on the camera and lighting settings that I hear far too often how hard it is to achieve portraits in terms of lighting.
The camera setting for this photo was set to manual. How I love to take photos in the manual mode where I can control how much light I want and how it effects the results seen in the photos. The camera setting was set as follows: Shutter 1/8, Aperture F4.5 and Exp +/- +4.7. I also placed a small soft spotlight 20 to 25 degrees from the model's face at a distance around half a meter away from her to illuminate her eyes. Some photographers would take extra soft light and would place it 45 degrees behind the model to illuminate the model's hair from behind and that works perfect if you are taking a portrait photo with your model´s hair lose. As you can see, it is not as difficult as you imagined it in terms of settings. Just remember in photography we paint with lights. What is hard in portrait is finding the right pose for the models.
There are so many types of portraits to try out there, from the traditional, formal, informal, fun and it goes on depending how creative you are.

You might also be interested in the link below on my older post that covers the basic approach on portrait photography: Portrait Photography

Portrait Photography

Portrait photography is not for every body. Sadly to say, it is not one of my strongest points but I am very happy with the way this picture came out. I found out that taking close up portrait photos is not just pointing your camera to the subject and start snapping and get a stunning result. It´s more than that. Knowing your subject´s name and personality really helps how you want your portrait to come out. My suggestion is to know your subject and have a nice conversation before starting the photo session. Get to know their personality, laugh with them, that way you see what you want to see in their eyes and capture that moment. By knowing their personality you get to know what is their comfort zone and what is not. Taking your subject to their comfort zone or out of their comfort zone works both as well as long as you know the limits. Of course lighting, angles and camera setting is also important but today I just want to share what is out of the box. We as the photographers need to make our subject as comfortable as possible and make the sessions as fun as possible. Without the personal approach, you can spend 10 minutes and wrap the session up because your subject seemed bored or you can spend hours and hours taking pictures because you manage to create a bond and a fun and relaxing atmosphere for both you and your subject.
Next time, my portrait photography post will touch more on the technical part of how to set your camera and lighting tips.

"A true portrait should, today and a hundred years from today, the testimony of how this person looked and what kind of human being he was." -Philippe Halsman-