Who Else Wants to Take Better Portraits?
Well, I guess most of us are open to improvement in one way or another. I have written an article with some tips on portrait photography before, but recently I also found this nice video about the subject. I feel it adds some information which I didn’t discuss in my post, so here goes!
episode 25, outdoor portraits #1 from Jim Talkington on Vimeo.
The purpose of this video is primarily to show how you go about getting the subject’s face well lit. Note also the following:
1. The sun is low in the sky - morning light, which is more gentle than the harsh midday sun
2. There is a great distance between the subject and the background, making it easy to render the background out of focus
3. They use a large reflector - you can make do with a much smaller home-made contraption, like a sheet of aluminum foil, if all you need is light up the face of the subject
Those are good tips - what the video does NOT show us is how to make the subject look relaxed and natural. Well, what do you expect happens when someone tells us “Now smile!”
Correct, what you get is a forced, un-natural smile. To avoid this, you have to give more time to interacting with your subject, to make her feel at ease and essentially forget all about the camera. To give you an example of a relaxed subject, I show one of the pictures from my previous post on portrait photography (by “lakshmi.prabhala“) once more here.
Again, the essence of a really good portrait is not just the technical qualities but also to a great extent what the subject’s facial expression communicates to us. Does it feel genuine, does it have depth? Do you feel you get a glimpse of the subject’s soul?
I believe those are some qualities which a good portrait should include.
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