{"id":200,"date":"2009-03-09T03:13:16","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T09:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.photography-basics.net\/learning\/?p=200"},"modified":"2009-03-09T03:13:16","modified_gmt":"2009-03-09T09:13:16","slug":"portrait-photography-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/portrait-photography-tips.html","title":{"rendered":"Portrait Photography Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a proper people portrait is very different from taking pictures of say a picture of family and you in a holiday travel destination. For one, you are not taking a picture of &#8220;I was here&#8221; in this so-and-so vacation place. Sure those photos are memorable and show a happy family together for an outing in some far flung place. And of course if you must and do show a bit of the location you were at by including bits of background picture of wherever you were having a vacation.<\/p>\n<p>However to get a nice good portrait photography, such backgrounds are more of a distraction unless you can make it part of your photo composition in an artistic way. In any case, less is more for portrait photography.<!--more--><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_202\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-202\" style=\"width: 258px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"media\/portrait-photography-tips.jpg\" alt=\"Get in close and fill the frame for portrait photography\" title=\"Get in close and fill the frame for portrait photography\" width=\"258\" height=\"434\" class=\"size-full wp-image-202\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-202\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Get in close and fill the frame for portrait photography<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The idea of portrait photography is to concentrate on the features of a person. One of the good ways to do that is to fill the frame. With this simple rule, you can&#8217;t go wrong. Set your aperture wide to your possible widest setting (eg f3.5) in your lens. Prime lens are quite useful here especially if you have an f1.8 lens that can blot out the background.<\/p>\n<p>How to fill a picture frame, there isn&#8217;t any fast and hard rule. You may leave some border space around the person head or go in real close and totally fill up the frame without leaving much left in the frame for any background to show through.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time, you would take the portrait picture from the chest up, and take care the frame do not cut off a person from any of the joints, like the neck, elbows, wrist. Somehow if a frame cuts through a joint creates a jarring picture, so better to cut off from areas of the body that are fixed like the forearm, thigh, shins, etc.<\/p>\n<p>A good tip for nice portrait photography is to have the person stare into the camera. Generally this would be right, though at other times you may break this rule for other effect, like if person is deep in thought, you would rather have the person stare into space, as they were far away in thought.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, the subject should not pose straight and facing dead front centre to the camera like a tree trunk that makes for a rather wooden pose. Have them turn their body, or tilt their head slightly or even have some interesting outburst of an expression to make the portrait photography come out alive in the picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a proper people portrait is very different from taking pictures of say a picture of family and you in a holiday travel destination. For one, you are not taking a picture of &#8220;I was here&#8221; in this so-and-so vacation place. Sure those photos are memorable and show a happy family together for an outing &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/portrait-photography-tips.html\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Portrait Photography Tips<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[189],"tags":[188,190],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1bS5F-3e","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4170,"url":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/posing-portrait-photography-tips.html","url_meta":{"origin":200,"position":0},"title":"Posing for portrait photography","author":"Jan","date":"21 March 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There are many things to take note when learning to take portrait photography. You can't just ask the person to stand somewhere, take your camera and just shoot and hope for the best. A vacation family photo can be taken just like that. But to achieve more some additional understanding\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;People Portrait Photography&quot;","block_context":{"text":"People Portrait Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/category\/people-portrait-photography"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":249,"url":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/canon-picture-style-extended-functions.html","url_meta":{"origin":200,"position":1},"title":"Canon Picture Style &#8211; Extended Functions","author":"Jan","date":"3 December 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"If you find the photography basics picture style format is less than what you want, you could do more than just tweak the basic photography style settings by uploading additional Canon Picture Styles. For more choice of Canon Picture Styles you can download additional extended picture styles from Canon website\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Photography Basics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Photography Basics","link":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/category\/photography-basics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":192,"url":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/people-portrait-photography-tips.html","url_meta":{"origin":200,"position":2},"title":"People and Portrait Photography Basics","author":"Jan","date":"5 March 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Taking photography of people whether it is family members, friends or even strangers requires a certain amount of awareness, a quick and steady hand to capture a candid moment. And of course you may need to stand up to some amount of embarrassment as you pick up your DSLR camera\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;People Portrait Photography&quot;","block_context":{"text":"People Portrait Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/category\/people-portrait-photography"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"media\/street_photography_corn_seller.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4162,"url":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/digital-photography-basics-mode-zone.html","url_meta":{"origin":200,"position":3},"title":"Digital Photography Basics Mode Zone","author":"Jan","date":"22 October 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The mode dial basic zone is a quick way for taking photography basics pictures. There is no need to fiddle with the ISO, white balance, focus points, shutter speed and aperture f-stop settings. See a scene, select the appropriate basic zone mode, and snap away! Basic mode zone is available\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Photography Basics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Photography Basics","link":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/category\/photography-basics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":239,"url":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/canon-picture-style.html","url_meta":{"origin":200,"position":4},"title":"Canon Picture Style","author":"Jan","date":"31 October 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Most of the modern photography equipment provides a simple way for how a basic photography will be processed. In the Canon DSLR they call it picture style setting which provide a certain amount of control over how the photo is processed. While most compacts will provide three simple settings called\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Photography Basics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Photography Basics","link":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/category\/photography-basics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4158,"url":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/digital-slr-photography-basics.html","url_meta":{"origin":200,"position":5},"title":"Digital SLR Photography Basics","author":"Jan","date":"14 October 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Learning to use a digital SLR for photography is a lot more complicated than using a point-and-shoot compact camera. It is not something you can just pick up from the shop or borrow from a friend and off you go for a quick snap. Do get yourself familiarised with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Photography Basics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Photography Basics","link":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/category\/photography-basics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":".\/media\/dslr_lcd_monitor.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.janleow.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}