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. This article will provide you with tips for achieving such high quality portrait photos.
Although achieving true high quality portrait photos is an art and requires experience there are some simple guidelines that you can follow in order to quickly improve your skills. Here are a few:
Background: A high quality portrait photo or for that matter any photo that a person is in its center of attention should have a passive background that does not take away the attention from the object. Specifically a portrait photo is all about the object’s face. Take your photos in a neutral background. A background that is comprised of soft solid colors is an example of a good background to use. A busy street or people moving around are examples of bad backgrounds to use.
Blurring: Another way to make sure that the attention of the viewer is not divided between the object and the background is to blur the background details. Blurring the background will literally lift the object out of the photo and make it standout. The technique to blue the background is pretty simple you will need to set your camera to a shallow depth of field. You can do that by using a zoom lens and shooting from a short distance or with a wide aperture manual setting.
The eyes: A face has many details, nose, eyes and so on. Which area of the face is important to focus on? The answer is simple, the eyes. The eyes tell a story they convey emotions, feelings, state of mind and focusing on them will make the photo better project all those feelings. Depending on the emotions and story that you are trying to convey through the photo guide your object to look straight to the camera or to look sideways maybe focusing on another object.
Lighting: This is a pretty simple issue, whenever possible use natural lighting. Natural lighting is much better in capturing the full color range and warmth of the skin. Take your photos outdoors during the day. Position the object in a way that the sun light hits it from the side. Do not take photos with the sun behind the object as it will end up as a silhouette. Do not take photos with the sun right in front of the object as it will result in overexposure and color distortion. You can use a fill-in flash to compensate for some shadowing that might occur on the face (for example in the nose area).
Experiment: It takes time to perfect your portrait shooting abilities. With digital cameras the cost of taking photos is literally zero. Experiment as much as you need check out your results and make the necessary adjustments until you get a good sense of how to achieve those high quality portrait shots.
To Conclude if you have a good camera and you are willing to experiment with portrait photo shooting you will be able to achieve the skills needed to shoot high quality portrait photos and to impress your friends with professionally looking portrait photos.
About the Author
Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran. Information about photography and photo prints is on printrates.com – your home for digital prints This article can be published as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. Ziv Haparnas writes about practical technology and science issues.
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