What Everybody Ought to Know About Posing for Portraits
‘puki body’ - by Annetta82
“Do you have any tips on posing for portraits?”
This question hit my inbox earlier in the week and I shot the reader back a few links to tutorials that we’ve written on the topic of posing for portraits. I thought that the list of posts might be useful to others too so have included it here:
- Posing Tips for Portraits – Posing Shoulders
- Which Way Should Your Subject Lean?
- Portrait Photography’s Power Posing Part I: The Components
- Portrait Photography’s Power Posing – Part II: The Poses
- Posing Tips – Waistlines, Thighs and Bust lines
- A Posing Technique from A Girl With a Pearl Earring
- How to Pose Hands in Portraits
- Where is Your Subject Looking and Why Does it Matter?
- 4 Tips for Natural Looking Portraits
What posing tips would you give someone starting out in Portrait Photography?
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
What Everybody Ought to Know About Posing for Portraits
How to bypass the Portrait Mode on Your Digital Camera and Get Great Portrait
Should I use my camera’s Portrait mode when shooting Portraits or would I be better off manually setting my camera up?
Unless you have a high end DSLR, most digital cameras these days come with an array of shooting modes (including portrait mode) for a photographer to choose from when out using their camera. These shooting modes are designed to help camera owners to quickly tell their camera what type of shot they are taking to give the camera a hint at what type of effect you want.
The results that your digital camera will give you in these modes is often quite good - however they do take the chance to be a little creative with your photography away and if you’re someone wanting to improve your photography you’re less likely to learn how to use your camera effectively by sticking to them.
So how do you set up your camera to get great Portrait shots without having to use Portrait Mode?
As with almost all questions that we explore here at Digital Photography School - this one will have a variety of answers depending upon your photographic style, the camera that you’re using and the type of portraits that you’re hoping to achieve - however let me share a few starting points that will hopefully give you some good results so that you can then start experimenting (note: it might be helpful to have read my previous post on Exposure if you’re a beginner - hopefully this will help you get some of the concepts I’m explaining below a little quicker).
Switch to Aperture Priority Mode
When I’m photographing portraits I generally switch my camera away from any of the Auto modes into Aperture Priority Mode. This enables the photographer to choose the aperture that they want to shoot at while still allowing the camera to make decisions about shutter speed (to ensure well exposed images). If you’re a more experienced photographer you might want to try out full manual mode - but Aperture Priority mode will probably do for most of us.
Choose a Large Aperture for Nice Blurry Backgrounds
The actual aperture setting that you choose when in Aperture Priority Mode will vary from situation to situation and between camera/lens setups - but in most cases you’ll probably want to start with a fairly large aperture as this will decrease the depth of field in your shots (this is what portrait mode generally does). This will help to ensure you have a nice blurry background. The beauty of this type of setting is that it leaves your subject as the only element in focus - highlighting them as the main focal point and removing any other distracting elements (read more on using aperture to get blurry background).
Keep in mind that if you have a very fast lens that choosing the maximum aperture available can decrease the depth of field to a point where some parts of the face of your subject are in focus while others are not. Also the very maximum aperture might mean you are not shooting in your lenses sweet spot. Pull it back a stop or two and you might get a slightly sharper image - the key is to do some experimenting if you have the time to do so.
Select a Low ISO for Smooth Shots
The ISO setting that you use will vary depending upon the lighting situation that you’re faced with - but in most cases you’ll want to decrease the amount of grain or noise in your shot by selecting a low ISO (I try to stick to the 100-200 range). The main thing to watch when selecting an ISO setting is what impact it has on your shutter speed. Sometimes choosing a very low ISO will mean your shutter speed is just too slow for sharp images (I’ll talk about this below). If the shutter speed is too slow at the ISO you’ve selected you’ll either need a larger Aperture or a higher ISO.
Shutter Speed
If you’re shooting in Aperture Priority mode as we’re suggesting above, the shutter speed will be selected by the camera automatically once you’ve selected the aperture and ISO settings that you want. However - if you choose to shoot in full manual mode you’ll need to pay attention to shutter speed. Because your subject is a moving one (even if they are trying to stay still) you’ll probably want to keep your shutter speed at least to 1/60 second or faster (1/125 is probably better, especially if you’re not using a tripod).
White Balance
The white balance that you will need to select when taking portraits will again vary upon the lighting conditions that you’re shooting in. Learn more about White Balance.
Focussing Mode
Many digital cameras allow the photographer to choose between a number of focusing modes. At one end of the spectrum the ‘Auto Focussing’ setting on most cameras will use multiple focussing points to determine where to focus. At the other end of things is a manual focussing mode where the photographer has complete control. In the middle is often the option to focus the camera on a single point in the frame.
While the multi point AF setting will generally get things pretty right in most normal shooting conditions, in some situations it is helpful to be able to use either manual focusing or the single focussing point options (particularly in lower light). I personally prefer the single point setting as it allows me to pinpoint the exact part of the face that I want in focus (almost always the eyes).
Metering Modes
In a similar way, many cameras allow a number of different metering modes. Once again, on many cameras this ranges from a multi point system where the whole frame is taken into consideration when working out exposure levels through to a single point metering system (spot metering) where the photographer can pin point one small part of the image that they want the exposure to be base upon. Again, I often choose a spot metering mode when shooting portraits - particularly when the subject is backlit or where there are bright or dark parts of the image that could skew the results.
Tags: Modes, Portrait Mode, Portraits
Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.
How to bypass the Portrait Mode on Your Digital Camera and Get Great Portrait
Darkening With Light
Have you ever wondered how photographs get that background darkness that makes the person appear to be standing in front of some great abyss? Well, that effect isn’t as difficult as you might think and the trick seems counter intuitive.
The key is to darken your picture with more light.
Let me explain with an example.
On Sunday, my nieces and nephews came over for our typical family dinner. Since they were already dressed up in their Sunday best they asked if I could take a few shots before we sat down to eat. If you knew these kids you’d know why shooting after eating wasn’t an option. So I had 5 min to figure out how to take decent pictures in a boring living room with bad lighting. As you progress in photography be prepared for these situations. Fortunately I had an idea.
First, I took a dark blanket off the couch and had someone hang it over the door. If you have ever tried shooting in front of a blanket you’d know that the results are often less than pleasing most of the time. Textures and wrinkles can be distracting. I didn’t want light coming from where I was standing so I removed the flash from my camera and handed it to a bystander and told them to aim it like a gun close to the subject.
Ok, now some mildly technical stuff.
Both Nikon and Canon have a wireless flash system that’s semi-standard on their cameras and flash units. I was shooting Nikon so their terminology is slightly different than others. First, I set my flash unit (SB-600) to “remote†mode and noted the channel (1) and group (A) displayed on the back of the flash.
Because remote flash units need to be triggered by another flash, I decided to just use the popup flash that was already on my camera. I went into my camera menu and changed my flash to Commander Mode. In that same menu, I set the camera flash to control any remote strobe set to Channel 1, and any flash in Group A to fire at normal power.
I was only using one remote flash for this shot but the camera can control many units with this same system. The last thing I did was to dial down my pop-up flash as low as it would go. I wanted to use it to communicate with the other strobes, but I didn’t want any of its light to actually make it into the picture. Whew… done.
As difficult as that sounded, it took roughly 30 seconds to do. So now I had a remote flash that could be placed anywhere in the room that was being controlled by the popup flash on my camera. No more boring, always lit from the front shots.
Ok, final technical point to this shot, and that is how to achieve the dramatic shadows with a pure black background.
As you know, for a subject to be properly exposed you manipulate the shutter speed and aperture size until you are letting in just the right amount of light for a proper picture. Well what would happen if you had a subject that was so bright that in order to keep them properly exposed you had to close the shutter before the surroundings had time to burn their way into the photo. (Re-read that last sentence if necessary.) Wala!
By making a subject intensely bright, or much brighter than the surroundings, it will properly expose long before the background, in my case a dark blue blanket, shows up. I put my camera in manual mode and stopped down my aperture to as small as it would allow (f/22) and set my shutter speed as fast as it would go while in commander mode (1/250).
Again, seems counter intuitive, but by having a bright flash so close to the subject, you end up darkening the rest of the photo. The entire photo-shoot took less than 10 min from setup to finish.
Lets recap.
Step 1: Get the flash off your camera to achieve those dramatic lighting and shadow effects.
Step 2: Set the flash to be remotely controlled.
Step 3: Set your camera pop-up flash to “Commander Modeâ€.
Step 4: Dial in your flash settings with your camera menu. I used normal power (1/1).
Step 5: Dial down your pop-up flash so you don’t get light coming from the pop-up in your photo.
Step 6: Put your camera in Manual mode with the smallest aperture and fastest shutter speed available to avoid over exposing your shots. Adjust from there.
Give it a try and post your results.
