Casual, Informal PortraitsCapture your kids, your girlfriend or strangers |
Article & Images by Jon Sienkiewicz |
Five things combine to create perfect portraits of the casual, informal kind: subject, background, lens, exposure settings and post processing. Every portrait you encounter can be analyzed from these five vantage points. Armed with this foundation, you can make first-rate, informal portraits by following the actions outlined below. At the very least, you can improve the photos of your kids, your girlfriend-and even strangers. |
Light the Subject |
To add light to the dark side of a face, use a reflector. I prefer the small foldable units that are silver on one side and a warming gold color on the other, but in a pinch a sheet of common white copy paper is a reasonable substitute. |
Using the correct White Balance is of extreme importance. If at all possible, use the Custom white balance setting on your camera. The Auto setting on most cameras is good but not good enough to consistently yield pleasant skin tones. Avoid fluorescent lighting, too-it usually has a large green component that can be very unflattering. |
Professional studio photographers imitate a technique call Rembrandt Lighting. You can do the same in casual settings, too. This compelling style is characterized by one side of the face being fully lighted; the other side is darker and has obvious shadows along the jawbone and a bright triangle of light beneath the eye. Ideally, the characteristic triangle is the same width as the eye socket and no longer than the nose. |
Composition |
The best focal length for portraits falls in the 70mm to 105mm range. The worst choice is a wideangle lens. An 80mm lens renders a pleasant perspective-the relative size of eyes, nose, ears and so forth is complementary and attractive. Wideangle lenses tend to make closer objects appear larger, which can distort facial features. Long, long telephoto lenses compress objects and make them appear flatter. You can use a long telephoto on occasion-it's certainly worth experimenting with-but for day in, day out success, stick the something close to 80mm. |
That's another reason why I favor the Tamron 17-50mm zoom. In addition to having that large, sweet f-stop, it covers the equivalent range I need-out to 80mm on my crop-frame Canon (75mm on my Nikon). Another ideally suited lens is the widely acclaimed, award-winning Tamron 24-70mm f2.8. |
I also use and recommend the Tamron 60mm f2 Macro lens. The super-fast f2 aperture allows me to easily isolate the subject (see below) and the 90mm equivalent focal length is perfect in every way. In fact, if I know that I'm primarily going to be shooting informal portraits, I'll start out with the 60mm f2 Macro. The 17-50 and 24-70 are more versatile for general shooting, and all three produce exceptionally sharp results. |
Isolate the subject |
By keeping the subject in focus and background blurred, the subject is clearly more prominent and even appears sharper. Use a large aperture (f-stop) like f2.8 or f2. This technique limits the depth-of-field (the area behind and in front of the point of focus that's also sharp). Limiting DOF isolates the subject and makes them pop out of the background. This is the most commonly used trick for good portraits. |
Engage the subject |
To engage the subject, talk to them. Douglas Kirkland, who is world famous for his portrait work on movie lots and elsewhere, once told me that the secret to provoking the best facial expressions lies in how the photographer uses his voice-whispers, chatter, and even outright yelling at times. If you've ever seen his work, you'll try his method. |
Busy kids look more natural, so give your youngsters something to do when it's photo time. Some people resort to waving a stuffed animal or using a bright red camera to catch a kid's eye. While it's generally better to catch children unaware, try asking them to pose, too. You're sure to get some interesting, offbeat images when kids twist their faces and try to look silly. |
Post Processing |
Tamron lenses give me consistent color rendition from lens to lens, so whether I'm shooting a model with my 90mm f2.8 Macro on my Nikon D800, or using the aforementioned 28-75mm zoom, the images contain the same color values. This is important, because no one wants to change editing parameters for each lens. |
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