Advice for Creating Great Formal Portraits

When someone you wants a nice formal portrait there are a few things to keep in mind. Posing, lighting, background, retouching and focal length are some of the points that need to be taken into consideration. When everything comes together the result is an image that the subject will be proud to display.

There are many styles of portrait lighting. The recent trend is toward a very even and diffused light on all sides of the subject. Formal portraits for many years were built on a foundation of the key and fill light. This lighting style features one side of the face in brighter light than the other. The Hollywood era of the 1930s and 40s featured black and white images with deep shadows. The important point is that the subject is lit in a manner that is flattering.

By definition formal portraits have some type of cloth or paper backdrop as opposed to an environmental portrait which includes elements such as tools for an image of a mechanic, or horse and hay bales for a cowboy. There are all painted canvas backdrops and seamless paper in all colors. A brightly lit portrait with a white background is known as a high key portrait.

Posing your subject is important and professionals have many poses in their repertoire. It is best not to use a regular chair because that can end up showing up in the image as a distraction. An adjustable is the beat. I prefer to have the person seated at an angle with one shoulder pointed at the camera. Then I have them turn their face directly at the camera. Shoot some with that shoulder facing forward; then switch to the other shoulder. Also make slight adjustment to the head position. If you are using a tripod, which is great for camera stability, shoot a few image from a bit higher than the subjects’ eye level and a few images from below eye level. If the person wear eyeglasses, it may be necessary to have them drop their chin a bit to avoid glare from the lenses of their glasses.

Another advantage of a tripod is if you are shooting several people in a session, things will move faster if the posing stool and tripod-mounted camera stay in position as the people posing flow through. Some photographers prefer not to use a tripod because they feel they have more freedom to move about. Shooting toddlers for instance may work better when not locked into a tripod. But executives tend to be well behaved in that regard.

When 35mm cameras were the workhouse of photographers the 105mm lens was known as a portrait lens. Why? Because if did the best job of replicating the way the human eye sees another person. Focal lengths on the high end such as 400mm and longer tend to flatten the face a bit. On the other end of the scale wide angle lenses tend to distort the face and make the nose seem longer. In some cases the subject’s ears may far seem away or the shoulders look out of proportion. With a DLSR there is a slight conversion to compensate for the fact that most digital sensors are smaller than a frame of 35mm film. So if you have a zoom lens on your DSLR set the lens at somewhere between 50mm and 90mm for optimal results.

Children have beautiful clear skin, but when you are shooting adults, retouching becomes an issue because of wrinkles, bags under the eyes, blemishes and other issues. Learning to use a few post processing techniques will lead to pleased customers. Just remember that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I used to do some portrait work for people who needed pictures to go on their online dating profile page. Although I normally did some fix up work; one woman requested that I make her look much thinner and offered to pay extra for it. I declined.

Retouching jobs can be sent out to third party firms, often located offshore in places like the Philippines or Malaysia. I recommend doing it yourself. The healing tool is my favorite. Get a fuzzy brush and set the opacity pretty low and go layer by layer. Most adults have crow’s feet on their eyes that can be dealt with easily. Select some nice clear on the cheek and layer that over the problem area. Then look for bags under the eyes and do likewise. Sometimes I will brighten the whites of eyes with the dodge tool or a very light application of white paint with the airbrush. It will make the person look healthier. Just don’t overdo it. The teeth can be whitened this way too. Some women will apply a thick coat of lip gloss right before sitting for a portrait and that using ends up reflecting the portrait light back at the camera. So this may have to be solved with the cloning tool or the healing brush.

One more point important when shooting portrait is to put the subject at ease and get them to relax and give a pleasant smile. I always like to get a good natural smile in a t least one shot. But for some portraits, such as a police officer or politician I also like some serious expressions. There are some photographers that real masters of dealing with people. Others know equipment, but lack people skills.

It takes practice to get it right. However, if you keep these points in mind, you will find it easier to create great formal portraits.

Capture the Golden Light of Sunset and Sunrise

The average person does not pay much attention to light, but photographers develop a sensitivity to the quality of light. For outdoor photography the "magic hour" is hour hour before sunset and one hour after sunrise. The sun at that time of day is not directly overhead and so it creates long shadows. The light is also not as bright and has a slight yellow cast.

RTFM Where is My Owner’s Manual?

by Jon Wason   copyright 2012

Back in 1901 if you had a dollar to spend on a frivolous luxury you could buy a Kodak Brownie camera. Even though the advertisements claimed the camera was so simple “any schoolboy or girl can make good pictures with the Brownie Camera” it came with a 44-page instruction booklet.  

More than a hundred years later, cameras still come with a manual and people still don’t read them. However, there are benefits to reading your camera manual or the manuals for any other mechanical devices.

The initials RTFM stand for “Read The Fine Manual” – or something like that. I think perhaps the angry retort, “RTFM, you idiot!” can be traced back to frustrated computer help desk employees, but that is just a hunch. Anyhow, my advice is just invest a few minutes and read the manual. After that put in your camera bag so in some future date when you are out in the field shooting some interesting subject and need to adjust something on your camera, you can easily retrieve the manual and find the answer. If the manual is back at home with the box the camera arrived in you are out of luck.

Many people purchase a new camera, excitedly open the box, remove the wonder of modern technology and never even open the manual, much less read it cover to cover.

I can’t recall how many times I was at wedding shooting all the events of the day and a person approached to ask me how to operate their camera. They ask, “Hey can you show me how to turn on the flash? I just got this camera,” or “Do you know how to change the shutter speed?” I did my best to help them but they were making two mistakes. The first was assuming that because I am a wedding photographer I know how to operate every camera. The second mistake was not learning how to use their camera. The best remedy for that one is to read the manual.

A few minutes spent looking at boring little booklet can pay off later with better photos.


HERE IS A LINK TO A SHORT VIDEO ABOUT F-STOPS:


http://youtu.be/FBJLg77daP8 

F-stops, Apertures and Lenses: a Lesson with Jon Wason

What is an F-stop? What is an aperture? How does the f-stop relate to the shutter speed? Learn the answers to these questions and more. Jon Wason uses salt to represent light for a lesson that will clarify the concepts and help improve your photography.


Follow this link for a 9 minute video:


http://youtu.be/FBJLg77daP8

Flash Memory is a Marvel of Modern Science

The tiny memory cards that store hundreds of images for digital cameras may look insignificant at a glance but they are amazing. Their storage capacity, the speed at which they write, and their low cost make them a modern marvel. These little rectangular Compact Flash (CF) cards and SecureDigital (SD) cards are silent, have no moving parts and can withstand exposure to magnets, intense pressure and temperature extremes. Even if you accidently drop one in the toilet, it will not be damaged.

The person credited with inventing flash memory is Dr. Fujio Masuoka. In 1984 while working at Toshiba he made major developments in his work with cells that hold data and can be erased rapidly then rewritten. Flash was suggested as an appropriate name for the new type of memory because the process of erasing data from the cells was like a camera’s flash. History was made in 1984, when he presented this new technology at the meeting of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in San Jose, CA.
Intel and other companes saw that flash memory had great potential. In 1988 Dr. Eli Harari and Sanjay Mehrotra, former coworkers at Intel, formed a company to produce flash memory for consumers. They founded SanDisk, which is now a world leader in digital memory devices. Sandisk’s launch in Silican Valley was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the the arrival of digital photography.
Some early digital cameras like the Sony Mavica stored images on a floppy disk. People liked this because it was easy to take the floppy out of the camera and insert it into a computer to transfer the images. The next generation of Mavica recorded images to a CD. But flash cards ultimately became the prefered media for digital cameras because they were small, had no moving parts and could be erased again and again.

Flash memory, unlike RAM (Random Access Memory) can continue to store information in the absence of a power source. This made flash memory a good choice not only for use in digital cameras, but also PDAs and video games. As consumer demand for flash cards grew Sandisk, Lexar, Kingston, Samsung and other companies offered Memory sticks, xD, SmartMedia and MultiMedia and other removable flash memory products.
As competition heated up, each brand would advertise higher capacity cards: Attention we have 4 Gigabyte cards! Look 8 GB for sale! Introducing 16 GB! Come and get the amazing 32 GB card! 64 GB cards are here! And as the public purchased the newest memory cards they found that the price paid per GB dropped steadily. That is the good news, but there is also bad news.
Unfortunately, counterfeit CF cards that look authentic but are knockoffs of the big name flash memory cards have appeared. These are passed off as the real thing to bargain hunters who later may find their joy of getting a great deal replaced by the sinking feeling that accompanies the realization that their data is lost.
Overall the invention of flash memory has been a great benefit to photography. So next time you are clicking photos take a moment to appreciate the wonders of modern technology.

What is a DSLR Anyway?

Perhaps you have heard someone mention the term DSLR and wondered what they were talking about. The "D" stands for Digital. What about the S, L and R?

The term SLR goes back about 60 years or so to the time when 35 millimeter cameras were gaining popularity. The Single Lens Reflex (aka SLR) was a significant advancement in cameras because it improved on the design of the earliest 35 mm cameras which used a rangefinder method of focusing. That was a very simple focusing system based on the range or distance of the subject to the camera. If the person you wanted to photograph was ten feet away you set the focus lever or dial to ten feet. If they were 30 feet away you set it for 30 feet. This involved a lot of guessing. Also, the viewfinder did not allow the user to look through the lens. Instead, a rather simple viewfinder gave an approximate view. As the focus was set, nothing in the viewfinder changed. Not very helpful is it?

When some engineers came up with a focusing system using a series of mirrors, so that the photographer could see through the lens that takes the photo. This new through-the-lens viewing configuration was dubbed SLR. Photographers liked the SLR cameras because the the accurate preview including the focus of the image. Another feature was that SLR cameras were made for interchangeable lenses. A busy photojournalist could carry a variety of wide angle and telephoto lenses and quickly switch lenses to suit the situation.
Another type of camera from the old days is the Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) such as the Rolleiflex, Yashikamat and Mamiya. These cameras had two lenses - one for taking the photo and one for the viewfinder. The SLR eliminated one lens which meant cameras could be smaller.

When digital photography arrived on the scene the quest for a digital version of the SLR began. Back in the early 1990s Kodak and Nikon collaborated to create the first commercially available digital SLR, the Kodak DCS-100. It was built on the platform of a Nikon F-3 body with the film drive removed. The result was a big heavy 1.3 Megapixel camera that sold for $30,000. But it was a DSLR.

One company tried for years to make a conversion kit that transformed a 35 mm SLR into a digital camera. But this never made it to the marketplace. In the end it was easier to design and build a new camera from the ground up. instead of converting an old camera to a new purpose.

As the 1990s progressed all the camera companies and some computer companies were making and selling digital cameras. Nikon marked a milestone in 1999 with the D1. This was a camera that could deliver image quality just as good as 35 mm film and it accepted the autofocus Nikkor lenses. Newspaper photographers loved it! The demise of film cameras lurked on the horizon.

Canon broke the $1,000 barrier for a DSLR in 2003 with the introduction of the Digital Rebel in 2003. The general public had a feeding frenzy taking ownership of this 6.3 Megapixel DSLR as fast as the factory could turn them out. In the years since, the price for a DSLR has come down several notches with the features have increased. In 2010 Canon is selling the 10 Megapixel Rebel XS for $499 and this includes a zoom lens!

So now we have inexpensive DSLR cameras with an accurate viewfinder and interchangeable lenses. Life is good! The advantage of a DSLR over less expensive digital cameras is the ability to change lenses. Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sony and the major manufacturers offer all sorts of telephoto, wide angle and macros lenses. Image stabilization systems help the photographer get sharper images than ever.

The disadvantage of a DSLR is that they cost more than fixed lens cameras. But as a person gets more involved in photography they usually trade up to better equipment so that there are less limitations to what they can shoot. The DSLR with roots in the film cameras of the past is a superior product. Professional photographers, serious amateurs and occasional shooters all the enjoy the benefits of the DSLR.