Portrait Photography

In portrait photography the most important thing is to make your subject look as good as possible - unless you have some special reason to humiliate your subjects you might be interested in following this advice.

Here I identify three types of portrait and give tips for taking nice pictures of each type.

Individual Portrait

Group portrait

Documentary portrait

Single portrait

Framing

With an individual portrait your subject can be standing, sitting, crouching or lying down and your first concern is to frame the subject as fully as possible. The human form doesn't fit the 35mm box shape particularly well, so you are going to have some wasted space. An off-centre subject will generally be more pleasing than one plonked dead centre of the frame, with autofocus camreras half-depress the shutter button with auto-exposure lock and then reframe the shot. The eyes should always be sharp.

Interestingly, we expect people to appear in certain sections, for example: head and shoulders, from the waist up, and full length, but we tend to be intolerant of other truncations. Excluding someone's feet or the top of their head from a full length portrait usually yields an unsatisfactory result in an otherwise fine photo. Be sure to choose a suitable vertical or horizontal orientation for your subject, don't forget that the printing machine or slide frame will cut off the perimeter.

Vertical Orientation

Horizontal Orientation

Group portrait

Important points to remember:

• Relaxed subjects look much better, so set up the shot and take it as quickly as possible.

   

• Don't have them squinting into the sun. Use fill-in flash if the background is brighter than the subjects, unless there are babies involved. Avoid firing flash at babies.

   

• Fill the frame as much as possible. Take the shot from slightly below eye level to enhance the sense of the subjects' importance.

   

• Try to connect the subjects by placing them very close together or preferably have them touching each other.

Single Portrait

Group portrait

Documentary portrait

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