Portraits can be really challenging but if you wade through all the technical jargon and the various tips and hints there are two tips that stand head and shoulders (Get it?) above all the others. I’ve toted a camera around for years and taken literally thousands of images and when I think about the pictures people like the most, again, I have used these two SIMPLE tips to capture them.
Tip #1 - Look Confident Even if you’re not!
Have you ever had your picture taken by someone who took a really long time to take the picture or looked like they had no clue how the camera worked?
It’s agonizing!
As they say, don’t let them see you sweat, could be truer in the case of taking portraits. If people see you fiddling a lot and looking puzzled they lose confidence and it shows in their expressions. I assume that most reading this are not professional photographers so this first tip is doubly important for you. If you’re using a point-and-shoot digital camera most of the hard work will be done by the camera so you can focus on checking out the background to see if it works and it the lighting is OK.
Actually, looking confident is the first tip because it gives you an opportunity to make your subject trust you from the get go. It feels good when someone says, “you know, this is not the most flattening background, lighting or whatever, let’s move over here.”
People like to be directed, because they want to look good.
Tip #2 - Take LOTS of pictures & I mean lots!
If you want a great looking portrait shoot, shoot, and shoot some more. Most people make the mistake of trying to capture the perfect picture in one or two pictures, bad mistake. Most people fire off a couple of shots and hope for the best. We all know how that generally ends up.
When I take portraits I take a lot of pictures, in fact I take so many that my subject finally gets bored and practically ignores me. And it is at that moment when some of the best expressions happen. They drop their defenses, stop worrying about how they look and tend to act more natural.
It never fails that when I take lots of pictures of someone the VERY best ones are near the end!
We are all creatures of habit. When we get in front of a camera our “camera behavior habit” takes over resulting in photographs that don’t really show us at our best.
So the strategy behind tip #2 is to literally wear them out and move them beyond their “camera behavior habit.” How this generally plays out is I’ll let them know I’m going to take a lot of pictures. And I tell them right up front!
Then I snap, snap, and snap some more knowing very well that I will be throwing away 95 -98 percent of the photos, but nobody cares because it’s digital.
Your subject will get bored… but when you hand them a couple of really nice looking pictures of themselves the boredom will be a distant memory and they will think you’re a great photographer.
By the way, these don’t have to be full blown photographic shoots. These two tips work for family, friends, coworkers, birthday parties and etc.
Force yourself to try them! Your photo quality will increase substantially!
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