5 Tips to Improve Portrait Photo From Being Disappointing

5 tips to improve portrait photo from being disappointing and photographs that contain people on average, make more appealing to others. We often find ourselves in situations where our photos include people as major elements : moments of everyday life, special events or portraits. When we are beginner photographers or if we still need to learn how to shoot portraits more better, it is quite easy to get disappointing results from our first attempts. Fortunately, there are a few simple tips, which can be applied in most situations, that put us on the track to achieve the best photographic portraits. These are of basic concepts, but they make a difference from a portrait. Many of the elements that make a good photo, as well as the composition, the choice of subject, the choice of the light, the choice of the environment, remain in the hands of the photographer.

 

5 Tips to Improve Portrait Photo : Introduction

 

If you are a beginner, before starting to read these 5 Tips to improve portrait photography; we think these are important articles to read :

 

1. What Camera Mode to Choose Depending on the Situation
2. Composition in Digital Photography
3. Rule of Thirds
4. 50 Tips on Choosing Poses to Get Stunning Portraits
5. Portrait Photography – Communicate with your subject
6. Portrait Lens for DSLR
7. Eye in Portrait Photography
8. Studio Portrait Photo and Digital Photography
9. Candid Photography

The advices in this article are sufficiently generic to be applicable to any type of camera – DSLR, bridge camera or a compact digital. Soon, we will expand this list with other tips to make portraits more and more beautiful.

 

5 Tips to Improve Portrait Photo From Being Disappointing

 

Eyes on fire

 

In the vast majority of cases, less than the artistic experiments, the eyes of the person to be portrayed will have to be in focus. Normally, the human figures in a photo attract the attention of the observer and within the human figure are the crux are the eyes. If you have a camera system with multi point focus, we place the point of focus to your eyes. If we can not do that, then we change the frame to place the point of focus on the eyes, half-press the shutter button and then recompose, without approaching or moving away from the subject in the meantime. Beware of the fact that; autofocus mode automatically decide the point of focus : it can not focus it where we want. Also be careful when we use an opening very wide aperture. As seen in the articles (some are already linked in the list) how to obtain the blurred background, an opening too wide at a very close distance may lead to an excessive portion of blurred image and a greater difficulty in having eyes perfectly in focus.

 

Telephoto Lens, yes, thank you

 

The focal length recommended by some photographers for portrait is 85 mm. Others climb up, reaching even 200 mm. There is no focal length perfect for portraits. What is true is that, generally; it is best to choose focal lengths above 70 mm. This becomes more true as we get closer to the subject being photographed. There are two main reasons behind this choice of focal length : longer the focal length goes toward the wide angle, more the subject is distorted, for example by extending the nose and making the inter distance of two eyes going more, longer the focal length is high, more is reduced part of the background of the photograph is included, increasing the importance we give to the person portrayed.

 

Be intimate

 

A mistake we made often in our first photos, we do not get close enough to the subject to be photographed. It happened instead of reading often the advice to get closer to the subjects of their photos, to be more intimate. In portrait photography, what is even more true is, since a shorter distance of major importance to the photographed subject, actually it creates a sense of intimacy even to the viewer of the photo.

 
Wider opening

As noted above, a wide aperture can cause difficulty in focusing, but it is also a common feature in many portraits to be used. As we have seen in the article on  these topics , a wider aperture allows you to isolate the subject in focus in a better way. Usually, this is the result we want to achieve in our portrait photo. A good aperture value can be f 2.8 and below and then with a larger aperture, risk of incurring the above problems (especially if we are very close to the face of the person framed), above the background becomes less blurred and then we lose insulation.

 

Give attention to the background

 

The eye and the human brain exclude the portion of the scene on which the attention is not needed to be focused, but the camera is not so smart. We must always be careful, then, what is the background – so as not to spoil a photo otherwise successful. This is also true in general. For portraits, in particular, two basic recommendations are : the horizon, if present, must not cut the neck of the human subject, you have to pay attention to objects that are aligned with the subject, avoid to create strange effects – such as a branch sticking out from behind the head to make horns. To implement these two recommendations, it is usually necessary to change the perspective, rotating around the subject or changing the height of our point of view.

 

These 5 tips to improve portrait photo from being disappointing can make a difference in many situations. Try to put them into practice . In the coming weeks, we will extend this list with other tips for beginner photographers struggling with the portraits and other niche. If you want to be remain updated then become a fan on Facebook and subscribe to the mailing list or follow me on Twitter or Google Plus.