JT Spunk | Photography

Studying The Craft Of Portrait Photography

One of the more challenging and skilled forms of photography is portrait photography. Given here are a few tips for the same. To be a portrait photographer, it is not necessary to be extremely creative with the camera, but it is more important to have technical expertise with it. Portraits can be photographed anywhere, inside of a studio as well as outside of it. A portrait means the face of a subject, with other elements of the frame out of focus. A portrait includes the face of the subject, very often up till the bust, but also the entire torso, or till the thighs or the whole body sometimes.

While having a studio can make things a lot easier for portrait photography, one can also take beautiful portrait pictures in other settings. The pictures should be so clicked that they can be enlarged well into a decent size. To achieve that, you would have to have a low ISO setting, prime lenses, a tripod of course, and a mid-range digital SLR at the least.

Portrait photographyconsists of two primary elements one of which is a controlled background. These backgrounds should be monochromatic preferably, or it has a print or a pattern, it should be completely out of focus. A portrait photograph only looks good when there are no distracting elements in the background. There are a lot of cleverly designed portable backdrops available, which create optical illusions so as to trick the viewer. These, when used against the subject give depth, effective contrast, and other such useful enhancements. If and when you do not have access to any required background, then you need to use some photography tricks like using a long fast lens, like a 300/2.8 so that the depth of field is very low and the subjects features would remain sharp.

The second primary element of a portrait is the lighting. The lighting in portrait photographyhas to be very well controlled and whether you have light stands or suspension lights, you need to choose the angle correctly. Umbrellas are often used to diffuse light and there are flash kits available for all this equipment. If for some reason you do not have the equipment for light and light control, the best way is to probably use some more photography tricks here. The subject’s face should be exposed to a light source, say, from a window, on one side. On the other, you may place a white card paper that reflects the light on to the other side of the subject’s face. In this case, a tripod is extremely necessary because you might have to use a slow shutter speed.

Portrait photographyagainst a natural background such as the sunset, a beach or in the woods can be very interesting, at the same time, very fresh. But it so happens, that many a time, the subject may not be comfortable in a particular environment- for instance, very sunny locations or very windy locations might just not work.

About the Author

I have been teaching people about photography from as early as I can remember.  It is a wonderful way to learn about life.

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