Basic Portrait Techniques

Monte Zucker explains the basics of portraits and what you should consider before taking a portrait.

It’s time to get serious about portrait to. It seems is it everyone that I have a digital camera they consider themselves a portrait photographer. But what I asked them what they're thinking about when they start to take a picture they really have no idea of what they should be thinking. We need to have the finish picture in mind before we begin. The most people are looking for backgrounds, are looking for lighting, very few people today actually look at the face before they create a portrait. So one of the first things we’re going to talk about is let's learn to do facial analysis so we can get a flattering picture of each person. When we do a facial analysis it’s important to have specific in mind. So the thing that I’m looking to do to make the most flattering picture is look at number one the hair style. With my hair it doesn’t matter because it basically the same on both side but when we’re dealing with man who have a part in their hair, woman who have hair that have more styling on side of the other I'm concern with turning the face towards the better side of the hair, that’s the first thing I look at for the facial analysis is the hair. The next thing I would look at would be the subject eyes. A lot of times people have one eye smaller than the other. You would think that the best thing to do would be the term the smaller eye that the camera her appear a larger but that’s actually wrong because eyes are all in shape and their wider in the center and they taper now or towards the outside edges. So if this where my smaller eye and I turn on a sideways you’re looking into the narrow part of the eye, if when the other hand this where the smaller eye and I turn my head in the other direction you'll looking into the broader part of the eye and its appear larger. So here's what we’re going to do the first thing we we’re going to do is look at the hair style to see which way we’re going to turn the subject face. And the next thing we’re going to do is look at the eyes. Now if the hair says turn the face one way and the eyes says turn the face the other way then we just have to decide which is more important which would be the deciding the factor. The third thing that I would look at would be the subject nose. Quite often somebody may have a bump or curve in the nose and when I ask the student on my classes would you put the bump in the shadow or would you light it the answer almost one of the time that is of course put it in shadow which is exactly the opposite of what it should be. Your eye is attracted to where the dark in the light need so you would want to put the straighter side of the nose against the shadow. And you don’t need to sit somebody to do a facial analysis its important maybe just to do the analysis while you're talking with the person and make him see the more comfortable. Then once you’ve decided in which direction you're going to turn the face we need to set up everything before you start doing a portrait whether you're working outside or inside the principles are really the same thing. What we need to do outside is get a simple background they have light control. Inside of course is a lot easier. I'm working here with lights it just stay on all the time they're not flashes but it’s the same principles. We’re going to talk about one light pattern, we’re going to discuss the light pattern, we’re going to discuss camera position and we’re going to discuss camera height. Let's talk about camera position first. Camera position from now on when you creating a portrait whether it’s a casual portrait or a serious portrait is going to be either full face which you're looking at when we right now. Face straight in to the lens of the camera theories of equal size even if you don’t see both of ears. Not almost full face but really full face. The second camera position is going to be the 2/3 to view with face and the 2/3 to view with the face is when you turn the face sufficiently enough for the side so when you're looking through the camera the eye on the four side of the face goes almost to the edge and there is just a little bit of flesh close and get in. Oh, you have to be careful about the nose you want to contain the nose within the outline of the cheek. You don’t want the nose to come to the edge of the cheek and you don’t want the nose to come up pass the cheek into the background. You also want to be careful that when turn the face to the side if the subject has a high bridge to the nose you don’t want the bridge of the nose to start closing over the eye. Now, I'm not saying this is the only way to do things. But if you're going to really be serious about learning to take portraits you have to have guidelines to follow. The only rule that I have is that if you like the way the picture looks take it, if you like the way the subject looks take picture but I have to educate you, I want to teach you things to look for so that you'll have better judgment. If it’s not perfect don’t worry about it but now let's give you specific guideline so that you'll know what you're looking for and since we’re doing portraits the first thing we’re going to do is look at the faces.