Learning How to Photograph People

Just remember being photographed is way scarier than photographing someone for the first time. My big break-though about being nervous photographing people, was when I realized they were way more nervous than I was! The best advise I can give about being nervous is, be calm and talk to your photo subject, listen to them, and observe them. Do this and it will be easier to decide how to photograph them.

Ask your subject questions about themselves, about their family. Ask them anything to get them not thinking about the photography process. Before you know it, they'll be so relaxed and enjoying being photographed. And this will allow you take a better portrait.

Just the other day I noticed my elderly next door neighbor cutting his grass. I was thinking about the idea of observing people more carefully and I noticed he had this awesome face. No he wasn't one of those Ralph Lauren models, but he had 'character to spare' and his face told a story - a story I wanted to try and capture.

There are specific poses and techniques to shooting a face with character. Strong lighting is a good start and converting the file to B&W can give it depth.

If you want people to be impressed by your portraits you need to experiment, have fun, and look at your subjects from a different perspective. Shoot out of the box! Learn to have the confidence to be unique, and dare to be different. All successful portraits usually reflect the personality of the photo subject and since everyone is different, shouldn't all portraits be different too? Your subjects will also have fun trying different approaches and they'll appreciate your creativity.

If shooting creative portraits is important to you - find out how to not only learn the basics, but also learn some great techniques used by the professionals.

Please don't think you need to run out and buy lots of new equipment so you can photograph people. If you can that's great, but remember "it's not what you have as far as equipment, it's more about what you do with what you have".

One rule of thumb, when considering equipment to use for photographing people, is to use a longer lens or just zoom in. Wider lenses tend to make a face look bigger or wider than it really is, and your subject might not like that.

Also by zooming in, you won't need to do it later when cropping your photo, thus making the photo appear sharper.

Before you start shooting, really look at your subject. Watch their face - their eyes. See how they smile, what makes them smile. You can drastically improve your photography by just taking some time to open your eyes and observe.

Someone once told me the key to great photography is first to learn how to see. And it's true, the camera is just the machine to record, but it's your eyes and mind that decide what and how to capture.

Have fun shooting and meeting some cool people!

Dave Gladstone.
(Registered Graphic Designer and Passionate Photographer)

This book has some great easy to follow techniques that quickly teach even the most novice photographer how to pose their photo subjects, so they will get more from their photography experience. The author has simplified what I thought was so difficult to teach.

This book has great step-by-step techniques such as:
- How to focus on the body to aid posing.
- The key to duplicating or creating any pose.
- The three letters that can build a pose.
- Exercises and suggestions to help analyze pictures and poses.
- Ten simple solutions when your model does not know what to do with their hands.
- The three basic head movements that make a difference to your model's features.

Photography Posing Secrets is a great book!

Dave Gladstone.
(Registered Graphic Designer and Passionate Photographer)

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