Need a headshot for your web site? A good photo of the little one for your holiday cards? A portrait of Grams for your self-produced family history movie? Taking good pictures of people can be hard, but don't despair. An average digital camera can take great portraits if you keep a few simple guidelines in mind. These steps should prove doable for non-professionals everywhere; no special equipment is required and the features discussed are widely available on most point-and-shoot cameras. Who knows, if you follow along carefully you may never have to pay for those expensive school pictures of your kids again.
Choose The Right Camera Settings
Hey, you bought a camera with a lot of fancy features, so why not use them? Most digital cameras have a "portrait mode" built in. Activate it by turning the mode dial to the portrait icon (usually a person's head). A professional photographer could no doubt explain to you what this does in terms of the camera's aperture and how it alters something known as "depth of field," but here's the quick and dirty version: it draws attention to your subject by blurring the background.
Let's blur the background even more. If your camera has a zoom lens, go to maximum telephoto. In other words, zoom all the way in. You may need to take a few steps backward to avoid taking a picture of just your subject's nose; that's fine, step back and zoom all the way in. This makes the background blur even more, throwing your subject into even sharper relief. (And please do not use "digital zoom." That "feature" should be the first thing you disable on your camera, never to be turned on again. Plain old optical zoom--or what I like to call "real zoom"--is what you want.)
Next, make the flash go off. Do not just let the camera flash if it needs to, because it won't need to; you'll be shooting in plenty of light. (See below.) You want to literally force the flash to fire. Doing this will soften the shadows on your subject's face and add a gleam to his/her eye.
Forcing the flash is usually very easy to do and involves pushing the flash mode selector button until the flash mode indicator displays the "will flash no matter what" icon (usually a lightning bolt) as opposed to the "will flash if necessary" icon (a lightning bolt with an "A" next to it). On many cameras there will also be an option to force the flash in red-eye reduction mode (a lightning bolt plus an eye but no "A"). Do this if available.
More About Light
To take a great picture you need more than just the light from your camera's flash. To get it, go outside in the daytime. Sunny, cloudy, it doesn't matter. Indoor light is often insufficient for good photography, so do yourself a huge favor and step outdoors.
Once you're outside, place your subject such that the sun is behind and to one side of them. If the sun is in front of them they will squint and that's not the expression you want to capture. If you put the sun directly behind them you may get direct sunlight in your lens, resulting in strange artifacts on your photo. Placing the sun behind the subject and to the side usually works well. I find that the sunlight from behind, combined with the light from the flash in front, make for a pleasantly lit subject.
Bonus tip: If possible take your picture in the early morning or the late afternoon. The light at these times makes for the best photography.
Composing And Shooting
Frame your shot so you get just the subject's head and maybe their shoulders. Really, the tighter you frame it the nicer it'll look. You do not need to document the fact that your subject has pants on. People will usually just take that on faith.
Remember to zoom all the way in and then compose your shot. You may need to take a step closer to your subject or maybe take a step back. Do not frame the shot by adjusting the zoom; leave it at maximum telephoto.
If you can, try to shoot where the background is as far away as possible. This also helps blur it and draw attention to your subject.
Now that your camera is set, you have good light and you've framed your shot it's time to shoot. Hold your camera steady and push the shutter release button only halfway down. Pushing the button halfway down tells the camera to figure out the auto-focus and auto-exposure stuff. Once the camera tells you that it's done all that (usually with a green light, a beep or both) you can push the button the rest of the way down - or not. You could pause here and tell your subject a joke to make him/her laugh and then push it the rest of the way down, capturing that perfect expression. (Joke not included.)
This method works for dogs, too! Note the blurred background and the sharp subject.
Pants or no pants - you decide. Note the highlights in their eyes from the flash.
Conclusion
Now that you've done all this preparation, take several shots! Nobody is perfect, least of all us amateurs. To make sure I get at last one good one I take as many as my subject has patience for. That's usually at least three. You might need even more shots if you forget to force the flash or your joke wasn't that funny. Your mileage may vary. Just remember to take more than one.
Speaking of remembering, how will you ever remember all this stuff? If you take away only four things from this guide, let it be these: use portrait mode, go to max telephoto, get outside and force the flash. Happy shooting!
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