Portrait tips?

Thoie

Hi,

I've been lurking around for a while, and finally bit the bullet and signed up.

I've enjoyed photography for a long time, and I'm happy enough with my seven million shots of flowers, more flowers, some dogs, a few mountains and more flowers. My problem is that my photos of people are just awful.

I'm not aiming to become a professional - I'd just like a few pics of family and friends that look well. I have a few friends who take amazing shots of people, but none of them are able to vocalise advice

I know some of the "rules" - take pics from above to avoid double chins, focus on the eyes, fill the frame etc., etc., but I always seem to end up with dull, flat pictures showing nothing of the personality of the sitter. I even persuaded a friend to loll around for me for an evening while we drank wine and I took shots, and even those are horrible. I've read a lot of the back posts here, and I know people have mentioned making people relax,
but even with my friend relaxed the pictures don't capture her well.

I'd appreciate any help you can give!

Paulw

Welcome along.

What sort of camera are you using? It might be a case of adjusting the camera settings. You could also make some small adjustments in post processing, boosting the saturation and vibrance.

Thoie

It's a Nikon D40. Don't have it with me at the moment to check the defaults I'm using, but even adjusting saturation etc afterwards just leaves me with boring dull photos that are now slightly more colourful

City-Exile

First things first, get a patient model.
Find a location where you have nice light to work with.
Get your exposure/aperture & white balance right, then try to get some different poses.
Try to focus on the eyes.

Once you're happy with all that, you can step it up a bit & try more settings.

Have a look at other peoples work, if you're short of ideas.
Good luck & be sure to post your images here for our perusal!

Thoie

City-Exile wrote: »

Good luck & be sure to post your images here for our perusal!

Oooh, I'm shy about posting pictures of people. I have a gazillion pictures of flowers if you'd like?

And this is a red flower, and this is another red flower, and here's a yellow one. Here's a red flower with leaves. Oh, and here's another flower. It's red.

City-Exile

No worries, mate!
Flowers will do.

Thoie

City-Exile wrote: »

No worries, mate!
Flowers will do.

Just one flower for you then.

Criticism welcome (mostly).

kgiller

City-Exile wrote: »

Get your exposure/aperture & white balance right, then try to get some different poses.

Hey, dont mean to jump the thread, just started out myself and was wondering what you meant by getting the white balance right? Are you talking about light metering or manually adjusting the white balance? I need all the advice i can get. Cheers

PS. I like the red flowers

DjDangerousDave

kgiller wrote: »

Hey, dont mean to jump the thread, just started out myself and was wondering what you meant by getting the white balance right? Are you talking about light metering or manually adjusting the white balance? I need all the advice i can get. Cheers

PS. I like the red flowers

The white balance of a picture is how true to real life the colors are when you look at the picture on a screen or get a print made. If you are shooting in JPEG mode you need to be carefull to have the correct white balance settings when you are out takeing the shots as the JPEG image whitebalance cannot be changed.

If you are shooting in RAW mode however I would say just leave your camera in Auto WB mode and then change it later on if the camera did not choose the correct settings.

The most common different environments are: Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten Bulbs, Floresent Tubes and Flash. You can see these in the settings on your camera or in your post production app.

Did that help?

melekalikimaka

kgiller wrote: »

Hey, dont mean to jump the thread, just started out myself and was wondering what you meant by getting the white balance right? Are you talking about light metering or manually adjusting the white balance? I need all the advice i can get. Cheers

PS. I like the red flowers

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm


some 'light' reading

hahahha

i'm hilarious i know :cool:

Thoie

Hmm. Do people really need ears anyway?

Can't sleep, so flicked through the info from Melekalikimaka (after typing that once, mind if I call you Mel? ), and then had a sudden notion about some old pics. Took one or two of the friend photos and cropped them right down and they immediately looked better. I'll ask her if she minds her photos being on the web so you can get an idea what I mean. As a child my father used always complain that I'd chopped the tops of people's heads off, but maybe I'm taking this too far and trying to include too much of a person in pictures. What do you think?

Paulw

It really depends on what you want to capture from the portrait. Sometimes it's a full length shot, sometimes just head and shoulders. Discuss with the model what you want, and what they want, before the shoot.

I've a sample gallery of some portraits I've taken if you want to browse.

It is always better to give some advice if you can post samples of what you have already done.

Thoie

Thanks PaulW. Obviously you're doing this professionally - are those professional models? Are they wearing a lot of makeup, or did you touch up the skin afterwards? None of my friends have such flawless skin I tried using Gimp to do a bit of a touch up on some of the pics, but I'm only just starting with post editing software so the results aren't great. As I said, I'll ask my friend if I can show some of the shots to give examples.

City-Exile

Thoie wrote: »

None of my friends have such flawless skin

You need to find some new, pretty friends!

Paulw

City-Exile wrote: »

You need to find some new, pretty friends!

:eek: Oh meow!!! Nasty.

Thoie wrote: »

Obviously you're doing this professionally - are those professional models?

Nope, I'm not professional. The models are hobby models. They do it in their spare time for a little extra cash. Some of those models were paid, and others did it in exchange for images.

Thoie wrote: »

Are they wearing a lot of makeup, or did you touch up the skin afterwards?

Actually, most of the girls are only wearing a little makeup. I did very little post processing on those images. Sometimes less is more - with the makeup and processing.

Thoie

City-Exile wrote: »

You need to find some new, pretty friends!

But then I wouldn't be the prettiest!

*looks in mirror* Oh. Dang.

kgiller

DjDangerousDave wrote: »

The white balance of a picture is how true to real life the colors are when you look at the picture on a screen or get a print made. If you are shooting in JPEG mode you need to be carefull to have the correct white balance settings when you are out takeing the shots as the JPEG image whitebalance cannot be changed.

If you are shooting in RAW mode however I would say just leave your camera in Auto WB mode and then change it later on if the camera did not choose the correct settings.

The most common different environments are: Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten Bulbs, Floresent Tubes and Flash. You can see these in the settings on your camera or in your post production app.

Did that help?

Ya thanks for clearing that up. I shoot in RAW mode and use lightroom for post processing, and do find myself altering the white balance on occasion.

City-Exile

Yeah, I normally shoot sport, where setting the WB is important.
I forget about the luxury of being able to shoot RAW, in a controlled environment.

Thoie

So, I've finally persuaded a friend to call over on Thursday to be my victim. He's an actor, and needs to get some new professional head shots done, but has agreed to sit for me before his professional appointment. If any of the shots come out nicely he might use them, but realistically he'll be waiting for the pro ones.

In order to make some of the shots more useful I'll put him in front of my plain, off white coloured walls. Is this a dreadful idea? I have some crisp pure white sheets - should I hang those as a background instead?

My current thought is that I'm going to avoid using flash at all if I can - I only have the built in flash on the D40. As I have no money or time at the moment should I try cobble together a diffuser for that flash, or stick with my plan of avoiding it altogether?

Is there an "ideal" focal length? I've heard 135 being bandied about for portrait shots - would that help?

I've done a google search for "model head shots" to get some ideas for posing. I've also taken a look at Paul's page as well. Does anyone have any ideas for other places to look?

Sorry for all the questions!

Fajitas!

You can use any focal length for portrait shots OP. I wouldn't be running out buying lenses or anything just yet

Usually, the longer the lens, the better it is for portraits, but that's not strictly true. Use whatever you can, and see how it works.

If you don't have a good light and diffuser, and are going to be using pale walls, you may be better off heading to the great outdoors for some photos, and not use any flash at all!

Hugh_C

Fajitas! wrote: »

Usually, the longer the lens, the better it is for portraits, but that's not strictly true.

That's like saying left-handed people are always creative but sometimes they're not.

Thoie, something like a 50mm would be a good place to start, and since I'm not sure what your level of expertise is, I'd recommend figuring out how to use Aperture mode on your camera, and set the aperture to something pretty large - this means setting the f-number as low as you can go, dunno about your lens but maybe f/2.5. The result of this is to de-focus as much of the picture as you can, except for the model. You can see an expample here where my wife is ouf of focus but my daughter is in focus - not the greatest photo in the world but you'll get the idea.



As others have said, I'd avoid the use of a flash entirely, so take your model outside. Avoid the middle of the day when the sun (!) is high, early mornings or evenings are best - the so-called Golden hour.

Post your results!

Hugh

challengemaster

Thoie wrote: »

Oooh, I'm shy about posting pictures of people. I have a gazillion pictures of flowers if you'd like?

We can't tell you what's wrong with your pics if we can't see them.. unless ofc someone around here has that ability.. if so, cool. :cool:

It may be a case of lighting, how you pose the model, or various other things, but none of us can really do anything except blind guess until we see anything.

Also once you've taken the photo you've every right to put it online w/o consent, it's your artwork so if you want to display it... only time you'd need consent is if you were selling it tbh. What you're doing is just polite but nothing more

CabanSail

The fixed 135mm lens used to be called a Portrait Lens. With the D40 that would be about 90mm due to the 1.5 sensor multiply.

Flat looking portraits are common if you are using direct flash, try to avoid that. If you only have the internal one then avoid that if possible.

Thoie

challengemaster wrote: »

We can't tell you what's wrong with your pics if we can't see them.. unless ofc someone around here has that ability.. if so, cool. :cool:

Wait, I thought I was on the psychic photography forum!

The friend I'm shooting tomorrow will allow me post some pics here, so hopefully there should be something to see on Friday so kind people can tell me where I'm going wrong.

Fajitas!

CabanSail wrote: »

The fixed 135mm lens used to be called a Portrait Lens. With the D40 that would be about 90mm due to the 1.5 sensor multiply.

Flat looking portraits are common if you are using direct flash, try to avoid that. If you only have the internal one then avoid that if possible.

Actually, it'd be just short of the 200 mark with the sensor crop

CabanSail

Fajitas! wrote: »

Actually, it'd be just short of the 200 mark with the sensor crop

90mm set on a lens with a 1.5 sensor will give a 35mm equivalent of a 135mm focal length.

challengemaster

well canon sensors are 1.6 iirc..

and how thats even near 200mm is beyond me.. 1.6x90..

ttcomet

If you can get your hands on the July issue of Practical Photography they have a big section on portraits.

Fajitas!

CabanSail wrote: »

90mm set on a lens with a 1.5 sensor will give a 35mm equivalent of a 135mm focal length.

Ah, my apologies!

I thought you had said that a 135mm lens would equal a 90mm on a cropped camera

City-Exile

challengemaster wrote: »

well canon sensors are 1.6 iirc..

Isn't it 1.4 on the 1D MkIII?

challengemaster

er.. 1D's are full frame..