Portrait Photography

What is Portrait Photography?
Portrait photography is an art of capturing portraiture for a person or a small group of people.
Portrait photography mainly focuses on capturing the face and expressions of a person or group in frame.
Its a common misunderstanding that portraits are shot indoors, these can also be shot outdoors as well and you can get amazing results.
In the article below I have shared some tips and tricks that will help you take better portfolio pictures. 

Some common tips:

• Make your model comfortable so that they don’t look stressed out in the photo.
• Carefully choose your location in case you are not shooting in a studio type of environment.
• Choose blank or clean background ideally a contrasting one or play with different shades.
• Keep model in focus not the background
• Tightly crop model into the frame to avoid distractions by other objects.
• Don’t use flash directly on face / eyes.
• Focus on the eyes of model.
• Use shallow depth of field, f3 – f5
• Using 70 – 200 mm lens will give better results
• Follow rules of third and pyramid composition where ever appropriate. 

Studio (Indoor) portrait shooting:
Use of light is key to taking good portrait pictures indoors. One must ensure that model is well lit ideally by using soft light unless you expect to get some dramatic effect in the picture.
There are many lighting techniques that are used by professional photographers today. Some of the popular ones are:

• Edge lighting
• Butterfly lighting
• Three-point lighting
• Window lighting

Environmental (Outdoor) portrait shooting:
Sun is your best friend while you are shooting portraits outdoor. Keep him on your side. If you click pictures keeping him behind the model you will be able to shoot Silhouette.
Use golden our for the light is soft and during this time and you can get best results.


Interesting article on lessons from Mona Lisa to the photographers:
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/what-the-mona-lisa-can-teach-you-about-taking-great-portraits




Few of more portrait pictures:

Model: Ashwini

 
To read more about other types of photography click here

Related reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_photography
http://photo.net/learn/portraits/
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/portrait-photography-tips