Shooting Portraits

A portrait is a painting or photograph of a person or people. It is most often a head shot, but in reality it can be any size as long as more than 50% of the image is taken up by the subject. The first photograph on this site is a portrait, the second is not.

Good portraits force your attention, usually to the eyes. This makes sense as a portrait is trying to communicate with you and eye contact is one of the key ways we let people know we are listening. Old master painters often vignetted the edges of the canvas to assist them with this effort, and so can photographers. The easiest way is to use make up, or light the subject with a tightly controlled source, or in post processing burn in the edges.

1: When your subject has a prominent forehead a way to minimize it is to tilt chin upward and use a low camera position. A good lighting trick is to use a gobo or barn doors to cut down the amount of light hitting the top of the head.

2: A long nose is often best photographed straight forward from a low camera angle. When lighting the subject, place your key light a bit lower than your normal position so as to reduce the amount of shadow that is cast by the nose.

3: When the nose is very angular, light it straight so that the shadow appears straight and photograph it from as straight a position as possible.

4: If you have a subject with a very narrow chin, try using a 3/4 position for the head, shoot from a low angle and have the subject tilt their chin up a bit.

5: For double chinned people, have them sit straight and lean forward looking upward. Shoot from a high angle and try to keep the neck shadowed.

6: Bald men should not be posed under a hair light, and a gobo should be used to shield the top of the head from most of the key light. You should try to tone the level of the top of the head to match the background.

7: People with a broad or round face should be lit with short lighting and posed with their face in a 3/4 position.

8: Narrow faces should be broad lit and shot full on.

9: Faces that are wrinkled should have diffuse or feathered lighting, be shot from a high angle and the pose should be relaxed but not smiling.

10: Scars, blemishes and the like should be placed in shadow when possible. Soft lighting will help to minimize the appearance.

11: If the subject has prominent ears (like Prince Charles), it is often best to show them in 3/4 or 2/3 profile. When one ear is pictured, it usually looks less dominating in the photograph.

12: When photographing people with glasses, it is better to have them tilt their head down a touch to get rid of the spurious reflections and give you a clearer shot of their eyes.

13: Deep set eyes need to be lit from a lower angle than you normally would be using. If you can't lower your light, or you have to light for more than one person, a small reflector can be used to bounce light into the eyes.

14: Pop eyes (like Marty Feldman's) are best photographed at a low camera angle.

15: For those with a droopy eyelid, have the subject look up so as to put a catch light in their eye.

16: For cross eyed subjects, have their head angled about 2/3 with the weak eye centered on your camera axis.

Broad lighting - The difference between the key and fill light is less than 1 1/2 stops for this style of lighting.

Diffuse lighting is light that casts few spurious reflections. You can diffuse light by using shoot through umbrellas, or soft boxes.

Feathered light is light off the rim of the soft box. It is softer than the light that is straight out of the soft box.

Fill light - Light used to decrease the appearance of shadows.

Gobo - Any object placed between a light source and the subject to create a shadowed area or limit the amount of light falling on the subject

Hair light - A light used to emphasize the hair and create the illusion of depth in the photograph.

Key light - The principle or main light used for creating the shadows used for modeling the subject.

Short lighting - Having only about half of a subject lit fully There is usually 2 1/2 to 3 stops difference between the key light and the fill light for this lighting.

Soft Box - A light source with a large diffusion panel designed to make the light source appear larger and cast feathered shadows