Portrait photo: life hacks and mistakes | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Do you want to move from shoot­ing flow­ers and cats to peo­ple, but are you scared? It is not clear how to take a por­trait so as not to dis­tort the pro­por­tions of the face and body? Are there opti­mal set­tings for pho­tograph­ing a per­son? Which lens is bet­ter to choose?

In this text, we have col­lect­ed use­ful life hacks and basic tips that will suit begin­ners and allow you to make your shots more suc­cess­ful from the start. Here you will also find a sto­ry about what not to do: the most com­mon por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy mis­takes.

Do you want to move from shoot­ing flow­ers and cats to peo­ple, but are you scared? It is not clear how to take a por­trait so as not to dis­tort the pro­por­tions of the face and body? Are there opti­mal set­tings for pho­tograph­ing a per­son? Which lens is bet­ter to choose?

In this text, we have col­lect­ed use­ful life hacks and basic tips that will suit begin­ners and allow you to make your shots more suc­cess­ful from the start. Here you will also find a sto­ry about what not to do: the most com­mon por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy mis­takes.

The first prac­tice of shoot­ing por­traits is best done on the street, so as not to think that the rental time is about to end / pixabay.com

How to take a portrait

What lens to shoot a portrait

It is believed that the focal length of the lens is fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant for por­traits. The focal length of a lens is a num­ber that is writ­ten on the lens and is expressed in mil­lime­ters. For exam­ple, 50mm or 18–55mm.

In the first case, the focal length can­not be changed and such lens­es are called “fix­es”, and in the sec­ond case, you can change it. In the com­mon peo­ple — to bring clos­er and fur­ther away. The sec­ond lens­es — with a vari­able focal length — are called zooms.

Speak­ing very sim­ply, the small­er the focal length, the more objects fit into the frame, and the more, the small­er, but the object seems clos­er. For exam­ple, wild ani­mals are pho­tographed on lens­es with a large focal length — 400mm, 800mm or even 1200mm.

Por­trait lens­es are lens­es with a focal length between 50mm and 200mm. But ide­al — from 85 mm to 200 mm. This is due to the fact that the wider the angle of the lens and the short­er the focal length, the more dis­tort­ed the pro­por­tions of the face.

If you have seen por­traits with huge noses in the whole frame, know that the wide-angle lens (focal length less than 50mm) is part­ly to blame for this, but, first of all, the photographer’s inex­pe­ri­ence.

The focal length of this zoom lens is 17–50mm. The “fixed” lens has the same thing, but instead of two num­bers, one. For exam­ple, 50 mm / Pho­to: pixnio.com

So what to choose?

- Lens­es from 85 to 200mm. They will con­vey the pro­por­tions as cor­rect­ly as pos­si­ble, give a strong back­ground blur. Of the minus­es — you have to move far from the mod­el so that it “fits” into the frame. Not suit­able for every room and pho­to stu­dio.

- Lens 50mm. Con­sid­ered a por­trait clas­sic. On the one hand, it con­veys the pro­por­tions cor­rect­ly, but also allows you to cap­ture the back­ground and, if nec­es­sary, blur it, while not depart­ing far from the mod­el.

- Wide angle lens. For exam­ple, 35mm. A lens for exper­i­menters who want to push the bound­aries of the genre. Thanks to the wide angle, many objects in addi­tion to the mod­el will fit into the frame. Yes, you will have to think more about the com­po­si­tion, but with the help of the envi­ron­ment you can make the image in the pho­to deep­er and more elab­o­rate.

At what distance to shoot a portrait

The opti­mal “aca­d­e­m­ic” val­ue is con­sid­ered to be a dis­tance of at least two meters. But for­get the rules! It all depends on the lens and your idea. The longer the focal length, the far­ther you will have to move. This can be used to, for exam­ple, stand on the oppo­site bank of the riv­er and pho­to­graph the mod­el near the water. Or maybe you, on the con­trary, want to make the max­i­mum close-up — take a pic­ture of the eyes, lips or oth­er details? Then you can safe­ly approach almost close­ly.

Or take the exam­ple of por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy with a wide-angle lens. You can stand at a dis­tance of two meters, but the pro­por­tions of the mod­el will be dis­tort­ed — the limbs will stretch, and on the sides the frame will spread to the sides, visu­al­ly mak­ing the per­son larg­er, “inflat­ing” him. Thus, even for shoot­ing a por­trait with a wide-angle lens, it is bet­ter to move a lot fur­ther away.

How to blur the background in a portrait

How to pho­to­graph a por­trait to blur the back­ground in a pho­to:

• Lens­es with longer focal lengths will blur the back­ground bet­ter. If you have a choice between a 35mm and a 100mm lens and your goal is to blur the back­ground as much as pos­si­ble, then choose the sec­ond one.

This is also true if you have a zoom lens. For exam­ple, when shoot­ing with a basic 18–55mm lens, increase the zoom to the max­i­mum (55mm) to blur the back­ground.

Blur­ring will focus on the mod­el and hide back­ground imper­fec­tions, if any / pixabay.com

2. Open the iris. Aper­ture is a set­ting writ­ten as f/1.4, f/2.8, etc. In sim­ple words, the small­er this num­ber, the brighter the frame will be, the more the back­ground will be blurred and the small­er the area in the pho­to that will fall into sharp­ness. On the one hand, you will get a beau­ti­ful blurred back­ground, but be care­ful — it will be more dif­fi­cult to get into sharp­ness, which means that the per­cent­age of “defec­tive”, blur­ry pho­tos will be high­er.

3. Increase the dis­tance between the mod­el and the back­ground. The far­ther the mod­el is from the back­ground, the more blurred it will be. Keep an eye on this — when pho­tograph­ing, inex­pe­ri­enced mod­els are wor­ried and because of this they often invol­un­tar­i­ly cling to the back­ground.

Think ahead of time

Appoint­ing a time and place for a pho­to ses­sion and com­ing there is not enough. To shoot a good por­trait, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er and mod­el need to do a lot of pre­lim­i­nary work. Find out what pho­tos the client wants to receive, think over the image in advance and ask to send you pic­tures of the clothes that the mod­el has. Cre­ate an image based on the loca­tion you have cho­sen, as well as the needs and mood of the hero­ine.

You can sup­ple­ment the image and loca­tion with post-pro­cess­ing, but the main impres­sion is still made by pho­tog­ra­phy, not retouch­ing / pixabay.com

A small life hack — always ask for ref­er­ences. So you will under­stand exact­ly how the client wants to see him­self, what mood he needs. This will also help the mod­el — it will gen­er­ate a spe­cif­ic request and will not wait for some­thing that should fall into its abstract rep­re­sen­ta­tions.

• Mod­els must be com­fort­able

In order for the per­son in the por­trait to turn out to be inter­est­ing, nat­ur­al and not look so tense, as if right now he is stand­ing on nails, lis­ten to the wish­es of the mod­el and fol­low how she behaves.

If the client is shy and calm, do not pick up dar­ing images and do not expose. Do not ask for impos­si­ble emo­tions and wild expres­sion that a per­son can­not squeeze out of him­self on cam­era.

Always lis­ten to what the per­son says. Some­one does­n’t like the way he or she smiles — don’t force it just because you’re so used to it.

Oth­er peo­ple are mobile, can­not sit still and say that they like nat­ur­al por­traits, dynam­ic shots. Then do not force the client to stand with a frozen face for half an hour, shoot him in motion!

Never do this — 5 mistakes when taking a portrait photo

• If you are a com­plete begin­ner, if pos­si­ble, do not pho­to­graph in the bright mid­day sun. The ide­al weath­er for you is cloudy. Cloudy weath­er soft­ens skin imper­fec­tions, and you def­i­nite­ly won’t get dark and rough ugly shad­ows. This is the eas­i­est light for a begin­ner, while the bright sun empha­sizes the relief (and there­fore wrin­kles, pim­ples, flaky skin) and makes you wor­ry about how the shad­ows fall, whether the mod­el is squint­ing.

Read also:

Out­door pho­tog­ra­phy in sun­ny weath­er — 12 life hacks and a guide on the nec­es­sary equip­ment

• Shoot­ing with a wide-angle lens close to the mod­el. Yes, a wide-angle lens begs for it — even at a min­i­mum dis­tance from the mod­el, it fits entire­ly or almost entire­ly in the frame. This is espe­cial­ly true if the room is very small. But close-up shoot­ing with wide-angle lens­es dis­torts and stretch­es facial fea­tures. If this is not your idea, move fur­ther 4–5‑7 meters or change the lens. But remem­ber — the fur­ther you move away, the more the back­ground will “fit” into the frame and the small­er the mod­el will be.

• Inap­pro­pri­ate back­ground. The image in pho­tog­ra­phy is not only the type of appear­ance, clothes, acces­sories, make­up and hair­style that match each oth­er, but also the area where you are pho­tograph­ing! A gen­tle Tur­genev girl in a lace dress will look at least strange among neon signs, and a cat­woman will def­i­nite­ly be out of place in a field of tulips.

But what if there is an image, but you can’t find a loca­tion at all? Yes, this also hap­pens, and the best solu­tion here is a plain or neu­tral tex­tur­al back­ground in a pho­to stu­dio.

Anoth­er life hack is to open the aper­ture as much as pos­si­ble and blur the back­ground so that details are not vis­i­ble / pixabay.com

• Long expo­sure

Shut­ter speed is a set­ting that allows you to “freeze” motion and adjusts the bright­ness of your pho­to. It is denot­ed by num­bers — 3 ”(three sec­onds), 1/125 of a sec­ond, 1/500 of a sec­ond, etc. The faster the shut­ter speed, the dark­er the pho­to and the bet­ter the mod­el’s move­ment is frozen. If you are pho­tograph­ing a per­son in dynam­ics, shoot­ing dancers, ath­letes and do not want to get a blur­ry pic­ture at the same time, short­en the shut­ter speed. Start with the num­ber 1/250.

• Don’t over­think pos­es

In order not to aggra­vate your inse­cu­ri­ty and fear of the mod­el, think over and look for pos­es in advance. You can make sketch­es, sto­ry­boards for a future pho­to ses­sion, but you can also go the sim­pler way — take screen­shots from movies, down­load art and works of oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers to a sep­a­rate fold­er on your phone.

Then you will know exact­ly what to do, guide the mod­el, who will relax, feel­ing your con­fi­dence. This is espe­cial­ly valu­able, because pre­pared peo­ple who have gone through mod­el­ing schools and know every­thing about pos­ing rarely come to pho­to shoots.