10 Portrait Photography Tips for Beginners.

hi paul here from photogenius welcome to my channel we are today in the studio it's called brilliant white it's part of brisbane camera hire and i'm here with the lovely susan from brisbane camera hire and we are putting together a video for you guys all about portrait photography so what we've got lined up is 10 really cool portrait tips i've got five susan's got five so i think it's going to be a lot of fun so make sure you stick around so here we are at the brilliant white studio which is part of brisbane camera high brisbane camera high if you don't know is run by susan and of course they hire out only the finest cameras lenses lighting everything plus they have this really cool studio at the back so thanks for having us pleasure you can rent everything you see here all available and brisbanecamerahire.com if you want to find out more i will put links in the description below to susan's instagram and website so you can find out more about the studio and the higher side of things as well as i mentioned we've got lots of portrait tips to share so let's get straight in with tip number one so my first tip is to focus on the eyes and this may seem like an obvious one but sometimes people miss this when you're talking to somebody it's all about engaging with the person that you're having the conversation with so generally you look that person in the eye now with photography it's no different if you look at an image and the eyes are out of focus then the image just doesn't quite work as well because you're not engaging with the subject so i think it's really important to focus on the eyes of the subject if the subject is looking directly at the camera then it doesn't really matter which of the two eyes you focus on but generally if somebody is looking slightly off camera then you focus on the eye that is closest to the camera now if you're photographing animals you treat them in the same way if you're taking a picture of your dog make sure you focus on the eye i can't tell you how many times i've seen pictures of dogs and the nose is in focus but the eyes are out of focus so a pretty basic tip but really really important so what you want to do is learn how to control your camera's focus points now i've looked into this and dealt with this in a separate video i'll put a link in the description below so you can check it out later don't forget there's also no hard and fast rule that says that your subject needs to be looking directly at the camera for their portrait and some of the most interesting portraits are where the subject is looking away and off camera absolutely like with a lot of photography sometimes it's good to bend the rules and try different things so the subject's looking at the camera make sure their eyes are in focus but of course they don't always need to be looking off or actually out the camera for the image to work so from my first tip my suggestion and i do this on almost all of my shoots is to have a mood board or just a collection of images that you've seen and that gives you the general mood of what you're trying to replicate so i'll use pinterest for this sort of thing and i'll start collecting images that might give me posing ideas or lighting techniques or just a general mood or theme of the shoot now sometimes this mood board can be client driven sometimes your model or your client will send you a mood board of what they want you to achieve for them so it's definitely a good idea to be well across this before your shoot that's a great tip as well i actually did this a couple of weeks ago i had a shoot that had a 60s theme to it so i created a pinterest page that i could share with the model that had some images on it some of the images were to give her an idea of the look that we were trying to achieve but also some of the poses that i really liked it was a really good fun shoe we had a 60s clothes we had a old 60s volkswagen bus as well and it was a lot of fun so that's a really great tip yeah i use it a lot and sometimes if your client sends you a mood board and you think they're maybe not quite clear on what they what they want to achieve it's not a bad idea when you're shooting to show them a couple of images on the back of your camera just to make sure that they're happy and it is what they wanted because there's nothing worse than delivering a set of images and they're not happy and good news pinterest is free okay so now for some tips on lighting because lighting is so so important with photography generally but obviously very very important with portrait photography in a studio type setup like we have here at the brilliant white studios generally you want to try and avoid flat lighting and what i mean by that is you don't want your light source to be central you want it to be off to the side generally in a studio situation you want your key light to be off to the side so it creates a bit of shape and a bit of shadow to the face it's a much nicer look and this is where i think a lot of people get into trouble because if they're using flash for example it sits right on top of the camera it's the light is equal on both sides of the face and you get this really nasty flat look if you're working outdoors try and look for ways of making your lights nice and soft so an overcast day is perfect otherwise look for ways in which you can maybe soften the light i've got a what's called a diffuser here and this is a diffuser which means that the light can pass through it so if i've got the sun beating down on me i can place this above my head obviously somebody else would hold it there for me and it will soften the light if i grab the cover this is a reflector cover so you put this on and now you can use it to bounce light and this is great for filling in shadows so if you've got somebody wearing a peaked cap for example and there's a shadow along the top of the head you can pop a reflector underneath and it will bounce the light in and fill in the shadows and there's a couple of different colors um so you got a silver side which gives you a very contrasty light the gold side gives you a nice warm kind of glow as well so there's a couple of really good tips and the great thing about a reflector and diffuser kit is it's a really cheap and effective way of giving you nicer lighting just jumping back to flash before as paul mentioned if you do have a flash and you've got one that you can see here that you know you can move that move it around do try and bounce this if you can off the ceiling or off a wall hopefully white so you don't get any color cast but that will give you a much nicer flash it won't look quite so flashy uh the next step up from doing that will be to get your flash off camera all together with a wireless trigger or something like that um which can gonna be a bit tricky to start with but it will really take your portraits to the next level absolutely another thing you might want to consider is led lighting which is a really good alternative because it's nice and compact you don't need a big battery pack it doesn't get really hot as well and we've got some running in the studio in fact all the lighting in the studio today is led lighting so we've got these big panel lights in front of us we've got these small units over here this is a small unit from loom cube led lighting is really really nice with a little unit like this you can pop it on the top of the camera where the flash normally sits and you can turn it down so it's not actually the main light but it creates this really nice little catch light in the eye so they're really really cool so a lot of my shoots actually take place in the studio this very one we're sitting in at the moment and so what i do always on every shoot is i set up and test way before the client or the model arrives so when you're shooting with studio lights there is tends to be always a lot of things that can go wrong so i will set up my lights i will meter them i will take test shots like i said way before anyone arrives there's really nothing worse than trying to troubleshoot things not going to plan especially when you've got an audience in front of you doesn't look terribly professional and if you're not shooting in a studio and you're out on location and then it's always good to scout that location before the day so it's good to know where you're going to shoot it's good to go at the same time of day that you will be doing the shoot so you can see how the light will fall and find your good little pockets of nice natural light and then on the day you'll feel well prepared um and yeah that's your really good tip of mind you just cannot be too prepared yeah you're spot on there we um we ran a portrait photography course just a few weeks ago so the week prior to that myself and susan went to um went to the location where we were going to run the course and we walked around and we we found some really cool spots we wanted to get a feel for how the light is falling so it's really just about being prepared because there's nothing worse than just panicking on the day it's not very professional so i think being organized is clear it's key there's nothing worse than working under pressure my next tip is to use a lens with a longer focal length because this will compress perspective and give a nicer look to the face it's generally accepted that for portraiture you want to use a focal length of at least 50 ml but ideally something bigger so 50 millimeters 85 millimeters or longer wide lenses tend to flatten the face and make the face look a bit fatter but longer lenses like this lens that susan has here will compress perspective and give a nicer look so tell me more about this lens uh that's right so this one here it's a canon lens it's a 70 to 200 so it is of that longer focal length seven is 200 it's also an f 2.8 so it can give you a really shallow depth of field um really popular lens in every wedding photographer's kit it's also it's quite expensive to buy but quite affordable just to rent for the weekend if you need it and one of our more popular lenses definitely so remember a lens like this that has a long focal length is doing two things it's going to compress perspective which will affect the shape of the face give you a really nice natural look but it will also give you what is commonly called a shallow depth of field which is a fancy term for a blurry background and a blurry foreground which makes the subject stand out and it's a very popular look for portrait photography so my next portrait tip is short and sweet and wins every time if you're shooting in a studio like i do a lot a quiet studio can be a really awkward place so play music i have a spotify playlist going and it just relaxes everyone so if you can and you feel like the mood is a little bit awkward play some music great tip okay so let's now talk about camera modes now of course if you're confident with your camera you can shoot full manual but a very popular mode particularly for portrait photographers is aperture priority which allows you to control the aperture with the camera looking after the shutter speed for you now to get into the aperture priority mode look at your camera model on the top of your camera most cameras this is simply the letter a for aperture priority on the canon cameras it's a v now why is it important for us to control the aperture well aperture affects depth of field which controls and affects how much of your image is in focus in front of the subject and also behind the subject a very popular look with portraiture is to make the subject stand out by making the subject really sharp we're making the background soft and blurry so the subject really stands out and the focus and the attention is more on the person than maybe things in the background which sometimes can be very distracting so what we're talking about here is opening the aperture wide which is a lower f number f 2.8 f 1.8 f 1.4 a very popular lens for portrait photographers particularly if you're a beginner and you're starting out it's the very popular nifty 50. so this particular one is the canon 50 millimeter f 1.8 lens so a reasonable focal length for a portrait photography but also has a really wide aperture best thing about this lens is it's very affordable as well i'll put a link in the description below so you can check it out now if you're taking a group photo rather than a shot of an individual what you don't want to do is open the app chart wide because that will give you a shallow depth of field and some of the people in your image may not be in focus what you want to do instead is close the aperture down this is a large f number i'm going to suggest a roundabout f 8. okay so my next tip is all about how to make your clients feel comfortable in front of the camera so when you've got a camera pointed in your face it's quite uncomfortable and you'd like to distract them um from what's going on so what i do is i just chat to them i ask them heaps of questions we find things in common i make terrible jokes and make them laugh just to get some genuine expressions and genuine smiles shooting children can be really tricky and that's where that long lens comes into play that we were talking about before like a 7-inch 200 in that you're not right up close in their face that you can be a little bit further away and still get some nice tight images definitely get down onto their level and don't forget that kids have a really short attention span so you're going to need to try and get some nice safe shots quite quickly because kids will give up after not much time at all but things like treats and snacks and the promise of a reward will always get a few extra minutes out of them and yeah i find if i can do all of these tips and tricks during my shoot at the end of it my client will go oh was that it that was easy now we can make a whole video about composition it is a really big subject so my advice if you're a beginner and new to portrait photography is to try and keep it quite simple one composition rule that you definitely want to consider using is the rule of thirds which basically means that instead of placing your subject right in the middle of the frame try placing your subject off to the side for a nicer more pleasing composition i have done a video all about the rule of thirds again i'll put a link in the description below so you can check it out if your subject is looking off frame or off camera then make sure that the direction they're looking is into the space that you've created so for example if i'm at the left hand side of the frame and i want to look off camera i want to be looking into the space that i've created another thing that people often miss is that you don't have to take every photo like this this is generally referred to as the landscape mode turn your camera on its side they call it the portrait mode this often gives you a more pleasing composition once you've got the camera on its side get in move a bit closer to your subject fill the frame then take some steps back so you've got a bit of space around your subject mix it up have fun okay so posing now this is an area that i struggle with a little bit and i think probably quite a few people do struggle with posing ideas unless you're shooting a professional model just normal people will not know how to pose so they're going to look to you for some direction which can be a bit daunting so that's where i said before to have your mood board and sort of inspiration images but it's always good just to ask people to do something to just move in some way get some a little bit more relaxed so just things like brushing the hair out of there you know behind their ears and just hold their watch adjust their tie a hand on hip something like that it just gives them a general direction of how to move their body without giving them a really rigid pose straight up so if i want to demonstrate a pose with someone you should never touch your model or your subject you should model for them what you'd like them to do so actually do it in front of them and have them copy you um now hands can definitely be a problem people don't know what to do with their hands uh they get a bit awkward so i find that props are good in this situation so you know whether it be a book or a coffee mug or a camera or something that's sentimental to them just having them hold something in their hand makes them feel and look a lot more comfortable absolutely so as a thank you for making it this far into the video we're gonna now give you two bonus tips i've got a tip susan's got a tip and my tip is actually posing related which is what you were just talking about and my tip is this ask your model to shift her weight onto one leg this means your subject will look less symmetrical but it will it will create a nice sort of s shape in the body this is something that a lot of professional models use all you've got to do is watch a fashion show for example you can google it look at it up on youtube and what you'll see is as the model reaches the end of the catwalk she will adopt this pose she will shift all her weight onto one leg and that's the point where all the pros take the photo she will then turn around and walk back again the next model walks down does the same pose it's a good pose it works it's a really good tip susan all right so my tip is get yourself down to a dollar store and for literally a dollar you can buy yourself just a small string of led fairy lights so they're battery-powered i don't know if you can see them because this studio is quite bright however shooting through these gives the coolest effect and we'll pop up some images which we took on our portrait course the other week but you literally hold these and have your lens and shoot through them and it just gives a really cool broker effect um yeah we really like it it'll just give you images just that something different that you don't see every day it is a really cool tip and also very easy and like you say very cheap as well so i hope you've enjoyed the video and picked up some really cool portrait tips it's been a fun video to make and a different format to what i usually do so let me know in the comments below if you've enjoyed it i want to say a big thank you to susan from brisbane camera hire for allowing us to use the brilliant white studio this is a really cool space so again more information down below if you're interested in finding out more about this studio or brisbane camera hire we've had a lot of fun haven't we it really has been great and if you've enjoyed the video please give us a thumbs up consider subscribing to my channel and don't forget down below comments suggestions and questions we'll see you again sometime soon see ya bye

Channel: Photo Genius

Views: 47,604

Keywords: portrait photography, photography for beginners, portrait photography tips, portrait photography tutorials, portrait photo ideas, beginner photography tutorials, photography tips and tricks, 10 portraiture tips for photographers, DSLR camera, canon, canon eos, nikon, nikon photography, how to take good instagram photos, how to take portrait photos, camera settings for portraits, how to do portrait photography, camera tips

Id: 24qGRgIzefo

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020