Portrait Photography

Portrait photography is the art of taking pictures of people. This can seem quite easy to do, but until you actually give it a go you might not realize there are some complications, and it takes a little trial, error, or know-how to get a really polished, professional look.

First and foremost, you need to always focus on the person's eyes. If the eyes are not in focus, your photo will fall flat.

Secondly you need to be sure you don't have any clutter in your background. One way to do that of course, is to postition your portrait subject in front of a drop cloth of some kind, like you see in the photos below.

Now one problem you quickly find when using a cloth background is, your subject can seem to be lost in that background. Notice in this first picture, the young man's head and hair are not clearly defined? In general the picture looks really nice, until you compare it with the next one...




In this picture, the subject seems to "pop" out at you much more nicely. In fact, he doesn't look nearly as flat or washed out in this version than in the first one.

His hair and head are nicely defined, plus you can easily "feel" the shape of his shoulders, upper torso, and even his face is much more appealing: It appears healthier, and more defined.

So what made the difference? Lighting. In the first picture, lighting was from the front only. There was a reflector used to help fill in shadows of course, but that didn't do enough.

In the second picture I added a small backlight, or hair light if you will because I pointed it at his hair and my intention was to highlight the hair a bit better and make him stand out more. The light did a great job of highlighting the hair, and it also spilled down onto the young man's shoulders too, which made for a much better portrait photo overall.


Photos featured here are ©Kathy Burns-Millyard, Electronic Perceptions Stock Photography

There are several different types and styles of people and portrait photos you can take, such as this one...


Taking picture of people in their own element is often referred to as an environmental portrait photo. You'll see this type of photo with business people in their offices or manufacturing facilities, ranchers on horses out in the field and so on.




When taking a portrait photo of any type, try to get some kind of facial expression from your photo subject. This really livens up the final photo and makes it much more appealing and interesting.