Portrait photography is all about people. How to show them at their best is a challenge. Either for business headshots or arranging a dozen family members for a group image. Of course, if photography portraits were as simple as shouting ‘cheese!’, we’d all be doing it. As a photographer, you are constantly looking for skills to develop.
Tips for Portrait Photography
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Settings
Let's talk about settings first and honestly guys I don't know if there's such a thing as budget camera photography tips but that's exactly why I want to use my Canon M50 today so I'll find out soon enough if there's a difference between shooting with my expensive camera and a budget camera like the Canon m50 I'll tell you all about that at the end ok so settings I don't like fancy settings on my PentaxI only use like 10% of the settings maybe even less but I do like a shallow depth of field so I'm gonna shoot at low aperture numbers for the Canon M50kit lens that means 3.5 but 6.3 when zoomed in all the way so we'll see how shallow the depth of field will be and usually I use aperture priority mode that's the AV setting you set the aperture and then the camera deals with the shutter speed automatically and if you use that modes still always keep an eye on the shutter speed because if it's too slow you got to do something or your photos will be blurry and that's it for the settings that's where I'm gonna start now the big difference between my pan pax and the Canon M50 is gonna be the view finder I'm used to an optical view finder and I love using an optical view finder but the Canon M50 has an electronic viewfinder I think most people who use the Canon M50 will compose their shots on the screen and that's totally fine because it's designed for that I'm not used to it so we'll see if I like that or not and if it will give meany problems let's just go out I already went outside but there's so much wind I'll do the talking in here so you can actually hear me okay so let's say you're doing a street photography project or a documentary project right here in this location you meet someone interesting and you want to make some portraits.
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Background
First thing I do every time is scan the whole environment for backgrounds the background is something a lot of beginners forget but it's just as important as a subject there's so much you can do with the background you can use colors depth frames shapes objects changing the background changes the whole story of your photo let me show you a few examples to show you the different possibilities so here I find this bush interesting it's what I call an easy background some green always looks nice and all you need to do is put the subject in front of it the background will pretty much do the hard work for you if you really want you can also use the branches and leaves to create some depth it depends on your style so a background like that pretty much always works but it depends on the story you want to tell and who you're photographing and why what's the whole context of your project depending on that there's another option just turning 45 degrees will give you this background all of a sudden there's more depth a different feel and atmosphere a different story I really like these kind of backgrounds with a lot of depth and then at the same location there are these backgrounds which for me are less interesting doesn't mean I don't use them but I didn't feel it right away you know so at any given location you have multiple options for a background and it's just a matter of turning left or right you don't have to explore the whole area always remember that don't just stop someone and shoot a photo the least you should do is turn left or right to see if there's a better background for your story okay but now the most important tip when you pick a background it doesn't stop there don't just put your subject in front of the background and that's it moving your camera left or right or up and down just a little bit within that background changes the whole composition and feel of an image it only takes a few centimeters and that's where you can really make the difference the position of your subject in relation to the background is super important because you can hide the subject in the background or you can make the subject the center of attention make it pop and all that by just moving the camera a few centimeters to the left right up or down now let's see what the result was with my Canon m50 and the kit lens maybe you've already noticed that the light was pretty bad and annoying from super cloudy to bright Sun every five minutes but actually I'm impressed even with such an annoying and difficult light that the Canon and 50 does a pretty great job and at the end of the video I'll tell you what I liked and didn't like about shooting with the Canon M50but yeah so annoying light what you can always do when you're shooting at noon in the bright Sun let's look for some shadow here I use that Bush to cast the shadow on her face and as long as the face is in the shadow it usually turns out pretty good you just don't want harsh shadows in the face if you can avoid that you're good.
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Subject
I have always said that the key is to make your subject feel comfortable but I have to come back from that because in documentary photography it's not always the case documentary photography is not about taking a nice photo of a person it's about capturing an emotion or a personality and definitely not taking the nicest best -looking photo of that person so if a person is naturally introvert or something like that you don't want to portray them as being super confident and make them feel comfortable always think about who you're photographing in a way what we feel in documentary photography is more important than what we see in a way of course because it's still a visual medium and then we have the framing of the subject and that's where you have to make some decisions close-up medium or wide full-body if you're photographing someone with specific facial features you should always include close -ups but my favorite something I include in a lot of my projects but a lot of beginners don't is full- body wide environmental portraits I like to show the subject in the environment especially if it's an environment that's close to that person because he or she lives or birds there and most importantly what kind of shoes someone wears the posture pants it all tells something about that person and you can only see that when you include everything in the frame okay now let's check out the results from my canon and fifty with the kit lens again it looks pretty darn good again the only thing I don't like about the kit lens is that I can't get a blurred background with these environmental portraits no matter what I try and I don't want a completely blurred out background but just slightly for medium or close- ups there's no problem zoom then all the way at F six point three looks really good there's a nice blur but for a full body wide portraits I just can't get it right so when you're photographing with a kit lens for example you always know what the limits.
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Light
The last tip of course the classic light now it's a matter of taste there is no right or wrong light I know a lot of photographers prefer soft light especially for portraits but does that mean that you can't shoot in the bright Sun no of course not I already showed you that you can use a bush or something else to cast a shadow on your subject space so you can shoot in any light no problem but you do have to learn the differences in light because that's really important it's also not always easy to spot good lights sometimes you discover it by accident when you shoot and you look on the screen of your camera and you're like damn that looks good today was super cloudy which I really like for portraits but the Sun also came out a lot and that I don't like when it's sunny I usually wait until the Sun starts to set late afternoon evening soft golden lights always looks amazing and then you can play around with the light too like in this picture but also when it's cloudy there's a difference don't think that the light is the same the whole day i fit's cloudy the whole day there's a big difference between shooting at noon on a cloudy day and shooting in the evening on a cloudy day in the evening it always looks better well for me at least okay .
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Budget Camera Or expensive Camera
So budget camera overall pretty good I really like the results and also when editing everything looks really nice not as good as my medium format Pentax there's a difference in tonal range and highlights roll- off but it's not so significant that it looks bad on the Canon m50 not at all I'm also really surprised about the view finder composing on the screen that's not for me I know that now I feel like I can't see everything properly the details you know I want to go in there and see every little corner of my frame but I could definitely get used to an electronic viewfinder no problem it wasn't annoying or anything like that and I used both manual focus and auto focus with face detection which actually I really liked in this case the only downsides to the Canon m50 with the kit lens is the kit lens it's a great little lens but I'm missing F 2.8 F 2 F1 point 4 especially for portraits like I said I'd really like to see a slightly blurred background when I shoot wide portraits but it's just not there it's also not the sharpest lens so the best way to drastically improve this little camera is to buy a nice prime or zoom the kit lens will do for a lot of hobby photographers but if you want that little extra you need something else I got the best results when shooting close- ups and medium portraits zoomed in all the way at F six point three it looks really good .
Portrait Photography Apps
There are many portrait photography apps are available to look your photos better .Here some apps that i have used.
- AirBrush
- PortraitCam
- AfterFocus
- Portrait: Depth Mode Photos
- TouchRetouch
That's all if you have any questions please do let me know and i'll be more than happy to answer your questions. Until next time take care guys. Bye:)
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