GoingManual.com It's time to take control!    Home    Tutorials    Photography Forum  Photography Tutorial Introduction Part I – Gear The Camera  -  Focus  -  Resolution  -  MegaPixels Vs Print Size  -  Sharpening Semi auto settings  -  Aperture Priority (Av)  -  Shutter priority (Tv) Zoom and Focal Length  -  A Note About Sensor Size Other Camera Features  -  Viewfinders  -  Lens Hood  -  LCD screen  -  White Balance Extra Equipment  -  Tripod  -  Cable Release  -  Filter systems  -  Polarizer and ND filter  -  External Flash  -  Studio Lighting  -  Reflectors Part II – Capturing The Scene Your First Manual Photo  -  It's All About Exposure  -  The Light Meter  -  Exposure Explained  -  Controlling Exposure Creative Effects  -  Aperture and Depth Of Field  -  DOF Preview  -  Shutter speed Putting it all Together  -  ISO  -  Ap. & Shutter Relationship  -  Stop for a minute  -  So What?  -  The Bulb Setting Metering the Scene  -  18% of Everything Metering modes  -  Matrix  -  Average  -  Center weighted  -  Spot or semi-spot Taking Meter Readings  -  Expose for your subject  -  Sunsets and sunrises  -  Reflecting sun  -  Night Exposures  -  Moon  -  Green Foliage  -  Bright or White Scenes  -  Dark or Black Scenes Understanding Your Histogram  -  Flash Metering Composition Lead in The Viewer Eye  -  Point of Focus  -  Fill the frame  -  The Rule of Thirds  -  Moving Subjects  -  Print and frame Sizes Different Styles Learn by doing  -  Giving and Getting Critique  -  Portraits  -  Groups  -  Children  -  Shooting Outdoors  -  Silhouettes  -  Macro  -  Products  -  Landscapes  -  Sports and Action  -  Panning  -  Rear Sync Flash  -  Abstract  -  Long Exposures  -  Black and White A few Other Useful Things  -  Blown Out Skies  -  Neutral Density Filters  -  Polarizing Filters  -  Electronic noise You're Half Way There! Part III The Digital darkroom  -  Computer hardware  -  Card Reader  -  Printers  -  Mouse Post Processing  -  The Ethics of Altering  -  Choosing Your Program  -  Tutorials   Photoshop Tutorials   Photoshop Primer   Saving Your Image   Adding a Border   Using Levels   Using Curves   The S-Curve   Correcting White Balance   Improving Saturation   The Clone Tool   Correcting Lens Distortion   Blending Multiple Images   Black and White Conversion   Sepia Conversion   Reducing Noise   Cropping for Different Print Sizes   Sharpening   Working With RAW Files   The Gimp Tutorials   The Gimp Primer   Saving Your Image   Adding a Border   Using Levels   Using Curves   The S-Curve   Correcting White Balance   Improving Saturation   The Clone Tool   Correcting Lens Distortion   Blending Multiple Images   Black and White Conversion   Sepia Conversion   Reducing Noise   Cropping for Different Print Sizes   Sharpening   Working With RAW Files   << Different Styles Groups >> Portraits Portraits Whether in your own home, a studio or on location, you can make great portraits of your friends and family, even your pets. Just remember the basic rules of composition and try to set up a scene in your house that's not too cluttered. Natural light is best used near a large window but avoid direct sunlight at it will produce very high contrast images, with a big difference between the light and the shadows. If you have to use a flash to fill in some of the shadows, lessening the contrast. Be careful not to cast a harsh flash shadow on nearby walls. A useful addition to a flash is a diffuser, a translucent plastic hood to soften the light. Tape and tissue paper make do pretty well in an emergency. No, not that kind of emergency, the photographic, harsh flash shadow, kind of emergency. Don't forget to use a reflector if you need to instead of a flash. It will fill shadows with ambient light, without any of the issues caused by a flash. An assistant is really handy to position it correctly. If you don't have an assistant, ask your subject to hold the reflector while you take your readings. Put your camera on a tripod and hold the reflector yourself. Trigger the shutter with a remote release or the timer. Take a picture of the background from the same position. That way if you accidentally include the reflector in the edge of the image, you can copy and paste the background to cover it up. Try not to kill all the shadows, they help to create a 3D effect. When there's no shadows the face appears very flat. Tip: Zoom in or move closer and take your meter reading from your subjects skin tones and set up your camera before moving back and re-composing your scene. Remember though very light or very dark skin tones will throw off your meter. Wide angle lenses do not flatter the human face. Lenses above 75mm (just over 1x zoom) are best as they don't create any wide angle distortion. When depth of field is short, you can create great effects. Focus on the eyes or use a slightly longer DOF to allow the whole head to be in focus, while leaving the background blurry. Experiment with your aperture settings and how far away you position your subject relative to your camera and the background. Here an example of 3 different focal lengths, you can clearly see the 18mm is not a flattering lens for facial portraits. 18mm 50mm 100mm However, wide angel lenses can be used for great creative effect, you just have to be aware of when to use them and when not to. This shot is also with an 18mm focal length. Both of these pictures were taken with artificial side lighting. One was converted to black and white using the channel mixer, while the other has a 'cross process' effect applied in post processing. Tip: For a 35mm camera using a focal length of 135mm position the camera about 7 feet from the subject to fill the frame. If your subject turns their head to one side, focus on the eye nearest the camera. Also try to remain on eye level with your subject. This might mean getting down low when shooting children. Not too low though, shooting from a low an angle gives your subject the appearance of looking down their nose at you (good if you want to produce an image of authority) and might introduce an unflattering double chin. If you look down on your subject they appear more timid. Great for dogs or when you're going for a cute look. Eyes can be straight into the camera, giving a more intimate feel, or looking to one side into the distance to give that 'faraway' look. To avoid red eye use an off camera flash or an external flash on a bracket. The red is caused by light reflecting off the back of the eye ball so increasing the distance from flash to lens reduces the occurrence of red eye. Personally I don't like the red eye reduction flashes on some cameras, they don't work very well and increase the time between hitting the shutter release and capturing your subject. If you can, try bouncing you flash off a wall. You can redirect on camera flash using a piece of foil. If you can use external lighting, don't have it shining directly from above as it produces unflattering shadows. Watch for these when bouncing the flash off the ceiling. Tip: Set up your camera using a tripod. Frame your model and set up your lighting then move out from behind the camera. Have them tell you a few stories about themselves. You can capture the emotion using a cable release and your model will feel less on display. << Different Styles Groups >>

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